Top 10 ACMI Customers in 2026: Who Buys Wet Lease Capacity

No buyer in the passenger market spends more on wet lease capacity. The group's three-year agreement with airBaltic lets it deploy up to 21 A220-300s in summer and five in winter at its hubs, and it backed the deal with a 10% stake in the Latvian carrier. Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian and Brussels Airlines all fly airBaltic aircraft, while Helvetic Airways runs a long-standing E-Jet operation for SWISS.

Eurowings runs its own wet lease programme on top of that. It used 19 wet-leased aircraft in summer 2026, slightly fewer than a year earlier, and brought in GetJet after SmartLynx stopped flying. The main risk for 2027 is its biggest supplier: airBaltic filed for Chapter 11 in September, and on 14 October it asked the New York court to approve continuing its Lufthansa Group agreements, including a modified contract with Austrian Airlines. Our October 9 brief covers the filing.

Amazon owns or leases its freighters but flies none of them itself. Cargo Facts puts the network at around 100 aircraft operated by contract partners: ABX Air, Air Transport International and Cargojet on 767s, and Sun Country, ASL Airlines and Quikjet on 737s. Most of this is CMI, where Amazon supplies the aircraft and the operator supplies crew, maintenance and insurance.

The provider mix changes over time. After Atlas Air pulled out of Amazon's 737 flying to focus on long-haul widebodies, Amazon moved eight more 737-800 freighters to Sun Country, which now flies 20 for the retailer under a contract running into the 2030s.

DHL mixes its own airlines with outside operators across every region. In the Americas, it renewed its partnership with Cargojet until 31 March 2033, with renewal options to 2037 and a guaranteed minimum of monthly block hours. On the transpacific, Atlas Air flies 747 freighters in Polar Air Cargo's network for DHL, and ATSG's ABX Air operates 767s under CMI.

DHL also wet leases between its own group airlines. DHL Air in the UK took two 767s from its Bahraini sister carrier between 29 March and 26 October 2026.

Qantas is the main reason Alliance Airlines ranks second in the world by ACMI hours. The two airlines renegotiated their contract in August: pricing went up from 1 July 2026, and the number of aircraft committed to Qantas falls from 30 to 23 over the 2027 financial year. QantasLink took its first in-house E190 in June 2026.

Qantas's other well-known wet lease, two Finnair A330s on Sydney routes to Singapore and Bangkok, has been converting to a dry lease flown by Qantas crews since October 2025. Both moves show a large buyer bringing more flying in-house while still keeping ACMI as a core tool.

KLM Cityhopper is one of Europe's biggest regional ACMI customers. It extended its German Airways contract to summer 2026, after citing pilot shortages as the reason for adding outside capacity, and German Airways is flying more than 5,000 flights for KLM this year.

The group also wet leases internally. KLM used HOP! aircraft and crews on Amsterdam routes to Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nantes, Montpellier and Lyon through the 2025/26 winter schedule.

SAS has built much of its regional network on ACMI. According to ch-aviation, it flies fourteen CRJ900s under a long-term wet lease with CityJet and thirteen ATR 72-600s from Braathens Regional Airways, alongside the E195s in its own SAS Link fleet.

This is one to watch. SAS has ordered 45 E195-E2s, with deliveries due to start in 2027 and run for about four years. That order gives SAS the option to bring more regional flying in-house as the jets arrive.

Virgin Australia returned to long-haul flying without buying a single widebody. Its Doha flights are operated by Qatar Airways under a wet lease that is authorised for five years, until mid-2029, and the two airlines have discussed converting it to a dry lease later.

The programme is growing. From 7 December 2026, Sydney to Doha goes from one to two daily flights, and Brisbane and Perth services return, all on Qatar Airways 777-300ERs according to aeroTELEGRAPH.

The Hajj creates the largest short burst of widebody demand in the ACMI calendar, and Garuda is one of its biggest buyers. For 2026 it needed 15 widebodies to carry 102,502 pilgrims, eight from its own fleet and seven leased, including A330-300s from Thai AirAsia X and both World2Fly AOCs and an A330-900 from Lion Air.

Outbound flights ran from 22 April to 21 May and returns from 1 to 30 June. Garuda's tenders pointed to damp lease contracts, so providers able to supply cabin crew with Indonesian language and Hajj experience have an edge.

Condor became a wet lease buyer out of necessity. After losing its legal fight with Lufthansa over feeder flights, it needed its own short-haul capacity to connect passengers to its long-haul network. For summer 2026 it contracted two aircraft from German Airways for feeder flights in Germany and nearby countries, plus two Helvetic Airways E190s with crew from late April to October.

flydubai is the newest name on the list. It launched its first dedicated freighter operation on 1 October 2026 with three 737-800 freighters wet leased from SolitAir for three years, based at Dubai World Central and used for both scheduled routes and ad-hoc charters. Each aircraft adds 23,000 kg of payload, and the airline plans to study passenger-to-freighter conversions from 2029.

It is a clear example of an airline using ACMI to test a new business line before committing its own fleet. Our flydubai freighter brief has more on the launch.