According to different business objects, flight transportation can be divided into passenger flights and freight flights. As the name suggests, the latter only undertakes the transportation of goods, and most of them use all cargo aircraft. However, due to the Limited cargo volume carried by air transportation in international trade so far, cargo flights are only opened by some large-scale specialized air cargo companies or some comprehensive airlines with a wide range of business in routes with relatively concentrated cargo volume. For the former, general Airlines usually use mixed passenger and cargo aircraft, which not only take passengers, but also undertake the transportation of small quantities of goods.

Because the flight transportation has a fixed route, port of call, fixed flight period, and a relatively fixed charge standard within a certain period of time, importers and exporters can predict the departure and arrival time of goods before the signing of the trade contract, calculate the freight cost, and ensure the performance of the contract, so it has become the preferred form of air freight for most traders. Especially in recent years, the competition in the freight industry has intensified. In order to reflect the fast and accurate characteristics of air freight, airlines continue to strengthen the scheduled rate of flights (the rate of flights arriving on time), emphasize fast ground services, and put forward the view of providing logistics services for enterprises, especially multinational enterprises, on the basis of attracting traditional fresh and live goods, perishable goods, valuable goods, and urgently needed goods. They are trying to become multinational companies' distribution products A right-hand man for semi-finished products.

However, on the other hand, due to the mixed passenger and freight models used in flight transportation, flights are mainly passenger services, and the cargo space is limited, which can not meet the requirements of timely shipment of large quantities of goods, and often can only be transported in batches. In addition, the change of passenger volume on the same route in different seasons will also directly affect the number of goods loaded, which makes flight transportation have great limitations in cargo transportation.