This is absolute nonsense. I don't know how you can claim this with a straight face. Almost all freight goes by sea, rail, and road, not by passenger aircraft.
In addition to this being in the context of air freight of which passenger..Not a whole lot of global freight involves rail or road only.
Not nonsense..
Passenger planes carried close to half of all air freight. And additionally while air freight only accounts for a small percentage of freight by weight, it carries a tremendous proportion by value.
He almost certainly meant air freight, given the context.