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Shaving 48 hours: Global air freight debate moves from Milan to Seoul

SHAVING of 48 hours off air freight transit times is a matter of life and death for the industry, said the new cargo chief at the International Air Transport Association.

Speaking at the The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA) Air Cargo Forum in Seoul, IATA's new air freight supremo Glyn Hughes said: " We have no alternative. Without it, modal shift will accelerate."

The "48-hour pledge", made by Mr Hughes' predecessor, Des Vertannes, has been much debated, but unresolved, reported London's Loadstar from Seoul.

Said former TIACA chairman Michael Steen: "The six-day process has got to change. There's a need to cut away everything that doesn't add value, whether in the handling process, or using more automation. We have to do better."

And during various panel debates at the Milan Air Cargo Forum, shippers have indicated that reliability was more important than speed.

Said TIACA chairman Oliver Evans, chairman of TIACA, explained: "When you have a big goal, you investigate and find important facts.

When SwissWorldCargo investigated, it found a remarkable time lapse between the cargo arriving at the airport and the forwarder coming to pick it up."

The theme - with its blame-the-forwarder refrain - was taken up two weeks earlier in Milan at the Air Cargo Handling Conference where Mr Hughes raised the 48 hour pledge as well.

Worldwide Flight Services (WFS) found much the same as SwissWorldCargo did, said WFS cargo chief David Ambridge.

Mr Ambridge said the longest flight was 16.5 hours and cargo handling agents require eight hours combined at both ends totalling 24-hours compared with the six to seven days of the average transit.

"So what about the other days," Mr Ambridge asked. "Why does cargo get delivered two days before shipment or collected two days after it arrives?"

One delegate, Murray Kidd from technology provider IBS, said one reason was that forwarders held shipments to consolidate them.

Agreeing, UTI director for air products for the EMENA region, Tjalling Boonstra said that allowed air freight to be affordable to customers.

"We are consolidators, so it may be that we send it the next day if we don't have a consolidation going out the same day, or we wait for the cheaper flights on Monday. That is why we are as cheap as we are," said Mr Boonstra.

"If we do everything back to back, the costs will go up - and no one wants that."

But there were opportunities to shave time from the process, he said and it was quite possible, because of cut-off times, to remove a full day from the transits by reducing the process by two hours.