Peak season capacity crunches are nothing new. But when your aircraft is grounded, and the part you need is sitting in a backed-up hub, the usual headaches turn into a serious problem fast.
AOG recovery doesn’t get to wait for holiday freight volumes to clear. It doesn’t get to wait out winter storms or carrier schedule cuts. Every hour that plane stays down costs up to $150,000, and right now, the air routes you’d normally use are fighting the same congestion as everyone else.
That reality is pushing more AOG and time-critical teams toward a different approach: pulling urgent freight off clogged air networks and routing it through specialized ground expedite carriers like Carrier 911 instead.
First and foremost, the current peak season is stacking problems in ways that make previous years look manageable. Consumer freight, industrial shipments, aerospace parts, and MRO flows are all fighting for the same shrinking pool of capacity. And the weather has already started throwing punches.
Peak season headlines love to focus on consumer packages. What they skip over: Your AOG shipment is competing on the same aircraft, same hubs, and same trucking lanes as millions of holiday parcels.
Global air cargo demand hit an all-time high in October 2025, up 4.1% year-over-year. Capacity growth? Lagging behind at 3-4%. Load factors on Asia-Europe, intra-Asia, and express routes are running hot, with booking lead times stretching past two weeks for priority freight.
Ground networks aren’t offering much relief either. Trucking is still shaking off a freight recession, and spot rates hovering around $1.95-$2.05 per mile against operating costs of $2.26 per mile have pushed smaller carriers out of business.
Not to mention, we still have a shortage of reliable drivers right when you need them most.
Thanks to the government shutdown, the FAA ordered 10% flight reductions at 40 major U.S. airports due to staffing issues in early November, and we’re still dealing with the fallout. UPS and FedEx also grounded portions of their MD-11 fleets, and widebody freighter deliveries and passenger-to-freighter conversions remain backlogged.
Meanwhile, AOG events keep climbing. Spirit reported 20 GTF-engine-related AOG incidents in Q2 2024, Wizz Air logged 44, and all point to growing baseline demand for emergency parts movement through a network with less room to absorb it.
Commercial airfreight for time-critical shipments depends on fixed schedules and available cargo space. Both buckle first when flights get cut or rerouted.
Peak season last year kicked off with over 2,300 flight cancellations and nearly 9,000 delays from winter storms. And Old Man Winter has already started swinging this year.
Des Moines International Airport closed for 13.5 hours over Thanksgiving weekend after an aircraft slid off a snowy runway. That’s one airport, one incident, one holiday weekend. We’re barely into December, and the real cold hasn’t even settled in yet.
You know how the rest plays out. Snow starts flying, airport ramps go into backlog mode, and ground handlers can’t reach facilities once state emergency advisories hit. Your engine module sits on a pallet somewhere while next-flight-out options disappear and capacity tightens.
Most AOG recovery plans work fine in normal conditions. But peak season isn’t what you’d call “normal.”
Your traditional mix of belly cargo, general-market NFO, and a couple of reliable trucking contacts was built for a world where capacity exists, and networks behave predictably. Holiday surges break both assumptions at once.
The “no big bang” peak season narrative sounds reassuring until you look closer.
Air cargo has been running at elevated levels all year on key lanes. Seasonal peaks aren’t arriving on an empty network. They’re piling onto a system already stretched thin.
AOG and NFO shipments still depend on fixed schedules and hub availability. When your part lands at a hub that just lost 10% of flights due to FAA staffing cuts and has freighters sitting idle on the ramp, “expedited” becomes a word on paper.
The flight your shipment needed left two hours ago. The next one with space? Tomorrow. Maybe.
The U.S. trucking industry is short over 80,000 drivers, and that number keeps growing as retirements outpace recruiting. The drivers who remain can afford to be picky about which loads they take, especially during winter weather and holiday weekends when everyone wants to be home.
Bankruptcies and mergers have been shrinking the carrier pool for months. Your go-to carrier might not answer the phone, or they’ll prioritize higher-margin freight over your emergency shipment. And regulatory enforcement doesn’t pause for peak season. Roadside inspections and FMCSA compliance checks can sideline trucks mid-route, blowing up exclusive-use plans and leaving urgent freight stranded unless you’ve already built a rescue option into your workflow.
Even when aircraft land and trucks show up, the cargo still has to move through terminals. During peak season, airport cargo facilities and cross-docks flip to first-come, first-served gridlock. Driver dwell times balloon. Pallets stack up waiting for handlers who are processing holiday volume alongside your critical shipment.
Experienced time-critical drivers know which facilities turn into black holes during surges. They’ll avoid those locations unless operations are streamlined and prioritized.
Your freight doesn’t simply need a truck. It needs a truck willing to go where your freight actually is.
You already know delays cost money. But peak season has a way of turning routine setbacks into six-figure problems before lunch.
When your freight sits waiting for an available flight, an open truck, or a dock slot, the meter doesn’t pause. Here’s what the math looks like across industries where time-critical freight keeps operations running.
Hoping your usual carriers and routes hold up during peak season isn’t a strategy. Neither is figuring out your backup plan while the clock is already running.
The teams that keep critical freight moving through holiday surges and winter chaos build their response systems before problems show up.
Here’s what that looks like.
Every shipment in your queue doesn’t carry the same financial weight. Classify them explicitly: AOG, line-down, service-critical, and everything else. Assign dollar-per-hour impact to each category so everyone on your team knows what’s at stake when decisions need to happen fast.
Tie each classification to preapproved routing rules and budget thresholds. When a true AOG event hits during peak season, you don’t want your team waiting on approvals for premium expedited modes. The authority to spend should already be baked into the shipment class.
Your primary lanes will clog up during peak season. Count on it. The question is whether you’ve already mapped your Plan B corridors or you’re searching for options while your part sits in a backed-up hub.
Identify routes that bypass congested chokepoints like Memphis or Louisville. Prequalify providers that can run direct airport-to-hangar or plant-to-MRO ground moves with aviation-ready documentation and TSA-knowledgeable drivers. Vetting a new provider takes time you won’t have when an aircraft is down, and the network is jammed.
You can’t manage what you can’t see. AOG and loaner-equipment logistics operations are investing heavily in GPS tracking, RFID, and real-time monitoring because reacting to delays after they happen costs more than catching them early.
The ROI is real. Analysis cited by McKinsey suggests advanced planning systems can cut lost sales by up to 75% and reduce transportation costs by roughly 30%. Visibility tools pay for themselves when they help you reroute a shipment before it gets stuck instead of after.
Crisis playbooks only work if people know they exist and have practiced using them. Build internal AOG response protocols that define who calls whom, what information needs to be gathered immediately, and the default decision path for shifting from air-first to ground-first recovery when capacity tightens.
Run tabletop exercises before peak season hits. Walk through scenarios in which your primary lane is down, your go-to carrier isn’t answering, and the weather shuts down a central hub.
Even with solid planning, documents, and preapproved budgets, it only gets you so far in the heat of the moment. When peak season gridlock hits, and your AOG shipment needs to move now, you need a partner who operates outside the congested lanes everyone else is fighting over.
That’s where Carrier 911 comes in.
Holiday surges, air capacity crunches, winter storms, and driver shortages aren’t black swan events. They’re annual traditions at this point. And your AOG shipment doesn’t get a hall pass just because everyone else is fighting for the same lanes. Every hour your freight sits waiting racks up money in losses, angry stakeholders, and customers who remember when you couldn’t deliver. The supply chain managers who come out ahead aren’t lucky. They treat seasonal mayhem as a given, segment their risk early, lock in alternate routes, and rehearse crisis responses while the weather is still nice.
If you’re responsible for keeping aircraft flying or critical assets online, you don’t need another generic carrier fumbling through final-mile delivery during a peak season pileup. You need a mission-critical expedited network that quotes in minutes, launches trucks in under an hour, and keeps you informed while everyone else sits stuck in the holiday queue. Carrier 911 was built for exactly that.
See a Carrier911 demo today and see for yourself why it’s the next logical step in building a peak-season and AOG contingency plan that holds up under pressure.
Get a free consultation call with one our specialists.
