Tag: Air Transport

Cologne/Bonn airport expects a loss

Cologne/Bonn airport expects to post a loss of EUR 6.9 million for the current year. The chairman of the board, Michael Garvens recently said in Cologne that the shortfall was due to the withdrawal of DHL and Lufthansa Cargo. He expects that the airport will only handle around 570,000 t of freight this year, which equates to 21 pct less than in 2007. After five successful years, 2008 will be one with challenged, Garvens stated. The airport hopes the situation will improve in the long term by its new customer FedEx, which wants to massively expand its activities from 2010. The airport boosted its turnover to EUR 271.1 million in 2007, a 5.8 pct increase compared to 2006. Earnings before tax rose by 10 pct to EUR 5.5 million.

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The Future of Mail by Air

A project to develop a postal air waybill (PAWB) and several related activities could enable airlines to manage mail traffic as part of their general cargo systems very soon, with significant cost and service benefits to their postal service customers. Air cargo and airmail must now travel internationally with different documents: the air waybill and postal delivery bill consignment note. Separate processes are required to track the two traffic categories, a problem compounded by the fact that airlines use air waybills to track whole consignments, whereas postal organisations want to be able to track individual bags or trays.
To bring these systems together, airlines and the postal authorities will have to work together to integrate the functions of their cargo and mail system, explains Jörgen van Mook, manager of Operations Planning for the International Post Corporation. “Then the airlines can manage mail in their cargo systems and, over time, do away with the stand-alone systems they use only for mail.” That objective is a central element in a joint initiative called the Future of Mail by Air established in early 2006 by members of the IPC and a group of mail-carrying airlines, including AF-KL cargo.
The postal authorities want airlines to improve the quality of service they provide, particularly for tracking mail consignments, and at the same time charge them less. However, in aligning the processes and systems required to do this, they want to avoid changing the legal status of mail, says Mr. van Mook. “Mail has to remain mail and not become cargo.” Mail and cargo are ruled by different conventions, Mr. van Mook explains. “Mail is ruled by the Universal Postal Union Convention and carried under postal delivery bills. It also has separate procedures for customs clearance.”
The Patch
Postal authorities and airlines have come up with the clever idea of creating a postal air waybill number, a reference number that enables airline cargo systems to track mail without the legal status it would have travelling with an air waybill. “Manifesting mail in a cargo system under a postal air waybill number does not mean creating an electronic air waybill,” Mr. van Mook says. “Mail would continue to travel with a postal delivery bill. However, it would have a special handling code, MAL, in the airline tracking system. IATA recently approved this designation specifically to enable mail tracking. Using a PAWB number, carriers can identify traffic as mail in their cargo systems and identify it for customs.”
Stéphane Bocquet, AF-KL Cargo’s director of Airmail, says the PAWB development is significant. “We will be able to add more value for our customers in the postal sector by providing enhanced tracking and tracing at a reasonable cost. The mail situation today is similar to the time when carriers and forwarders agreed to develop Cargo 2000 in order to ensure better visibility of their shipments.” Moreover, the continuing development of Cargo 2000 could also play a role in the airmail sector, adds Marloeke Werst, AF-KL Cargo’s sales director of Airmail Services. “Cargo 2000 provides the status messages required for tracking cargo based on the use of air waybill numbers. If we introduce postal air waybill numbers for airmail, then it opens the possibility of using Cargo 2000 to generate the messages for that traffic as well.”
In Practice
“The idea now is to let individual airlines and postal authorities decide how they want to number their mail shipments,” says Christophe Eggers, international networks manager for La Poste. The process starts when the post enters the airline booking system and creates a profile for tracking. Then, either the airline issues a PAWB number or the post provides the airline with a number. In one case, the airline could send an allotment of
PAWB’s to the post, which could allocate them to shipments as it sees fit and inform the carrier accordingly. Alternatively, the post could send the airline an EDI

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Delta acquires Northwest in USD 3.1B deal

Delta Air Lines announced a long-speculated deal to acquire Northwest Airlines for about USD3.1 billion Monday, a combination that will create the world’s largest airline and could lead to a series of other deals to reshape the U.S. airline industry.

The new carrier will operate under the Delta name, and be based in Atlanta.

Delta said the carrier will maintain the nine hubs of both airlines in the United States, Europe and Asia, serving more than 390 destinations in 67 countries. The combined carrier will have USD35 billion in annual revenue, more than 800 airplanes and 75,000 employees, according to Delta.

But many of the employee unions at Northwest were quick to voice opposition to the deal, even though Delta said it is not looking to cut non-office staff.

The deal could lead to less competition and higher fares on some routes where the two carriers now compete. But there is relatively little overlap between the current Delta (DAL, Fortune 500) and Northwest (NWA, Fortune 500) systems.

The greater impact on competition and fares could come if other major carriers follow suit and negotiate their own deals in response. Some experts have suggested that several deals could eventually leave three mega-carriers handling about 80% of the nation’s air traffic.

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Panalpina introduces new airfreight service to Latin America

Panalpina, together with its partner Centurion Air Cargo, has launched a new service – Palmair – linking its worldwide network with Latin America via the Miami, Florida gateway.

Panalpina will offer a direct transhipment concept for destinations in Latin America.

Miami serves as both Centurion Air Cargo’s base as well as Panalpina’s gateway to Latin America for freight originating from Europe, Asia and North America.

With the new concept, the two companies establish a link between the Latin American connections of Centurion and Panalpina’s European Road Feeder Network with its hub in Luxembourg.

Centurion has subcontracted the first leg to Luxembourg-based Cargolux – also one of Panalpina’s major business partners. This set-up gives Panalpina total control of the entire cargo flow from origin to destination.

The main destinations served through the new service are Bogota, Medellin, Barranquilla (all in Columbia), Caracas (Venezuela), Lima (Peru) and Manaus (Brazil), amongst others.

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BA World Cargo & DHL partnership pays off

British Airways World Cargo has launched a second Boeing 727 freighter routeing connecting Lahore and Bahrain. The additional weekly rotation marks the expansion of its partnership with DHL in the region.

The new rotation means that BA World Cargo now operates two Lahore-Bahrain routeings a week while maintaining one Karachi-Bahrain rotation. These routes connect with the Bahrain – London line flights, giving customers in Pakistan better access to the BA network.

The carrier has also secured extra capacity on flights between Bahrain and Dubai. This gives it a greater footing in the Saudi Arabian market.

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