BACargo mid-year revenues fall by 13.8%
Tough year for British flag carrier's finances has been made worse by terrorism.
BRITISH Airways World Cargo, which saw half year revenues fall 13.8% to Pounds 271.8m (Dollars 390m), plans to launch a long-awaited programme of premium products by March.
The flag carrier's cargo division still intends to charter jets from a freighter airline set up by Tesco supermarket heir John Porter.
BA World Cargo carried 387,000 tonnes in the six months ended September, down 18% compared with 471,000 tonnes in the same period of 2000.
Gareth Kirkwood, managing director, Cargo said: 'The financial year has so far proved to be very tough and there has been a 23.3% decrease in our revenues over the past three months.' BA's cargo performance, already hit by a global downturn, was made worse by the consequences of the terrorist attacks in the US.
Emergency government security regulations lasting 10 days required BA World Cargo to introduce double screening for transhipment air freight, which accounts for 60% of the airline's traffic.
Goods X-rayed at the foreign airport of departure were subject to a second screening on arrival at Heathrow before being put on the onward BA passenger jet.
'We had to bring in significantly more people and the process put a tremendous load on the X-raying system,' said Mr Kirkwood.
The BA cargo boss said his division's focus on North Atlantic and Middle East volumes had made it particularly prone to volume dips.
Mr Kirkwood denied suggestions that the carrier's troubled Pounds 250m cargo hub, Ascentis, was a key factor in the volume decline.
Ascentis, which opened fully for business in January this year after a two-year 'phased migration' from the old hub, has suffered prolonged teething troubles.
But Mr Kirkwood said that BA was beating its target of handling 90% of cargo delivered by truck to Ascentis within 90 minutes.
A second performance measure showed that the time taken by cargo to be unloaded from the aircraft and ready for collection by freight forwarders was four hours for unitised loads and six hours for 'loose' freight.
Mr Kirkwood had met chief executives from his top freight forwarder customers in the weekend before September 11. 'It was apparent that BA World Cargo had got significantly better but was not as good as it could be,' he said.
He confirmed that BA hoped to begin using Global Supply Systems, a still-to-fly freighter airline set up by Mr Porter and US carrier Atlas Air, by early next year.
A spokesman for Britain's Civil Aviation Authority said that GSS still awaited approval for its Air Operator's Licence and its Air Operator's Certificate.
GSS, which announced its plans in April this year, was not available for comment.
Mr Kirkwood said BA would launch a 'portfolio' of new services, orginally intended for December, by the end of the financial year.
He declined to describe them as Time Definite, the present buzz-phrase among cargo carriers, but said the services would have a 'time component'.
* US freighter aircraft lessor Atlas Air reported a third quarter net loss of Dollars 4.2m compared with net income of Dollars 23.1m last year.
But Atlas received Dollars 10.1m from the federal government as its part of the first series of payments under the Air Transportation Safety and Stabilization Act brought in after September 11.
After the terrorist attacks Atlas experienced an increase in demand for charter services, both commercial and military, allowing it to recommission four out of six freighters mothballed in the desert. A BA World Cargo freighter: the company plans to begin using new carrier Global Supply Systemsnext year.
Financial Times
