"We're probably the only people in the world selling socks brought in by air freight, " says Sunakoshi Yukio, spokesman for Wix, the Japanese distributor for the New York-based manufacturers.

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FedEx Express reported a sharp 13% decline in international priority freight revenues, while international air freight revenues fell by 17% year-on-year during the third quarter.

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Of course, by 1940, commercial air service had been hauling transcontinental freight, passengers, and mail for more than a decade, and doing so largely as a result of the incentive of Lindbergh's solo feat and his industrious efforts as a million-dollar-a-year consultant to the newly organized airlines.

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That has blurred the line between express services and air freight, and led to increasing use by integrators of spare hold capacity on passenger planes.

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Moreover, continuing shift in freight traffic from air to the sea, driven by higher fuel prices is not helping the air-cargo industry at all.

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The pesticide-free cooking roses used by most American chefs come from organic gardeners in California who air-freight them to specialty food suppliers around the country.

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Air freight offers speed for the 40% of the world's trade (by value) that travels in cargo flights or in the hold of passenger aircraft, but it costs ten times more than sea transport.

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Contrary to the obvious assumption, rising fuel prices might actually cause the use of ships for freight, as manufacturers reduce fuel use not by shipping things shorter distances, but by relying more heavily on efficient sea freight at the expense of less efficient land- and air-based modes of transport.

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