From MrBeast’s rescued lions to jet engines: Qatar Airways cargo chief spots strong demand in 2026

SINGAPORE - Tariffs by the US have dampened air cargo flows between the country and China, but overall demand for the service will remain strong in 2026 as businesses restructure their supply chains, said Mr Mark Drusch, who heads the cargo function at Qatar Airways.

Chinese companies, for instance, have shown increased interest in sending goods to Africa and the Middle East, regions where Qatar has chosen to allocate more resources, he told The Straits Times in a recent interview.

He said: “Because of uncertainty in the trade markets, we have moved airplanes around as the market moves around.

“We added more capacity into the Middle East. We added capacity into Africa. We have added more capacity into India, because the Indian market has continued to be very strong.”

The Doha-headquartered firm is a leading freight carrier with a 7.1 per cent share of the global air cargo market. It handled 2.6 million tonnes of cargo, around the average weight of 17,568 Boeing 777 aircraft, in the 2024 to 2025 fiscal year. This was an increase from 2.4 million tonnes in the previous fiscal year.

Business of cargo

Cargo teams work in the background to bring precious and time-sensitive goods from point A to B around the world, ranging from perishable products to mobile phones.

The industry supports e-commerce firms and celebrations such as Valentine’s Day, where roses are sent from places like Nairobi to Singapore. Race cars for the F1 Singapore Grand Prix were also brought to the Republic on Qatar’s cargo planes.

“So much of our daily lives is driven by air cargo, but nobody really understands it,” said Mr Drusch, who took the top post in January 2024.

“I have said to my team that we need to ‘make cargo sexy again’. What I mean is to let people understand it and appreciate it,” he said.

The carrier received one of its most interesting assignments to date in 2025, when American YouTuber MrBeast contacted it to transport three lions from war-torn Ukraine to a sanctuary in South Africa.

Because Ukraine’s airspace is closed to commercial aircraft, the lions were transported to Poland before they were taken to Doha on Sept 12. The animals were then flown to Johannesburg on Sept 13.

Preparations took months, as airports along the route had to be prepared to handle the lions. In addition, the animals had to be assessed as fit to fly and acclimatised to their crates.

Efforts were also made to minimise crate times, and keep the lions in a calm and dimly-lit environment as much as possible, according to the team involved in their transport.

Qatar makes more than 68 shipments of live animals every day. “We carry fish, we carry day-old chicks. We have carried endangered species that are going to zoos for breeding programmes,” Mr Drusch said.

“What we do not carry is animal trophies. I shut that down. If we are committed to the conservation of wildlife, we can’t participate in the hunting, shooting and killing of animals,” he added.

Aerospace demand

There has been a particular increase in demand from the aerospace industry, in the transport of high-value components of aircraft engines, and the engines themselves, Mr Drusch observed.

The number of daily shipments of aircraft engines handled by Qatar rose from more than five in the 2023 to 2024 fiscal year, to seven in the 2024 to 2025 fiscal year.

This is supported by plans by airlines to grow their fleet as air travel takes off in more countries across the world.

Aerospace customers often need to have their orders delivered as quickly as possible, but these need to be handled carefully as the instruments are sensitive to vibration, Mr Drusch said.

He said Qatar recently launched a product in response, where aircraft engines are placed on a dolly before being loaded onto cargo planes. This reduces the risk of them being knocked out of alignment.

The company has also created a product for the semiconductor industry, as racks for artificial intelligence chips are similarly sensitive to vibration.

Mr Drusch said: “We built a tech product that identifies how to handle this very specifically, to ensure that racks are delivered in the best condition possible, in terms of temperature, humidity, speed as well as vibration.

“We have seen a pickup in demand for the product on our network, and I expect that it will grow even faster here in Singapore.”