Air freight is what you buy when the thing you are sending has stopped being a parcel. The parcel grids in this record stop at 20kg for Royal Mail and 30kg for Parcelforce, and above that the trade stops selling you a service off a price list and starts quoting per consignment. The number it quotes on is chargeable weight, which is the greater of what the shipment actually weighs and what its volume implies, and that single rule explains most of the surprise in an air freight quote.
Where the parcel ladder stops and air freight begins
Royal Mail's published grid tops out at a Medium Parcel of 20kg inside 61cm x 46cm x 46cm. Parcelforce publishes a weight ladder to 30kg at £21.40. Above those, nobody in this record publishes a rate at all, because air freight is quoted on the shipment rather than sold from a table. That is not evasion, it is that the inputs change: an air freight price depends on the route, the aircraft space available that week, the density of what you are sending and whether it needs a dangerous goods declaration.
Chargeable weight, and why a light shipment can be priced heavy
Air freight is priced on the greater of actual and volumetric weight. Volumetric weight is the shipment's volume divided by a divisor the carrier sets, and it exists because an aircraft runs out of space long before it runs out of payload. The practical consequence is that a pallet of cushions and a pallet of tiles can be quoted the same, and that reducing a box by a few centimetres in one dimension sometimes moves the price more than removing several kilograms.
What an air freight quote does and does not include
A quoted air freight rate is usually the flight and the handling at each end. Customs clearance, duty and import VAT at the destination, delivery from the arrival airport, and any storage if the consignment waits are separate lines and are frequently quoted separately too. Ask which of those are in the number before you compare two quotes, because the difference between an airport-to-airport rate and a door-to-door one is large enough to reverse which quote is cheaper.
When air freight is the wrong answer
For a single box under 30kg it usually is. Parcelforce publishes £21.40 for up to 30kg and Parcel2Go's international pages price named parcel services from £7.79 to Germany and £11.10 to Australia, all of which move by air anyway on the long routes. Air freight earns its place when the consignment is too heavy or too large for those services, when it needs a customs procedure a parcel service will not handle, or when several boxes travelling together are cheaper consolidated than sent one at a time.
Questions people ask about air freight
How much does air freight cost from the UK?
Nobody in this record publishes an air freight rate, because it is quoted per consignment on chargeable weight rather than sold from a table. What is published is where the parcel ladder stops: Royal Mail at 20kg and Parcelforce at £21.40 for up to 30kg, read on 10 September 2026.
What is chargeable weight?
The greater of what a shipment weighs and what its volume implies, using the carrier's own divisor. It is why a light bulky consignment is priced as though it were heavy.
Is air freight faster than an express parcel service?
Not necessarily door to door. Express parcel services already fly, and they include customs clearance and final delivery that an airport-to-airport freight rate does not.
When should I use air freight instead of a courier?
When the consignment is beyond the published parcel limits, which in this record means over 30kg or outside 61cm x 46cm x 46cm, or when it needs a customs procedure a parcel service will not carry.