Next week the Washington-based Brookings Institute’s Metropolitan Policy Program will release twin reports as part of its Metro Freight Series examining the volume of goods flowing through U.S. ports and across the nation by truck, train, boat, plane, and pipeline.
     For nearly 100 years the Brookings Institution has been a private, nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and innovative policy solutions.
     These new reports examine where traded goods start, flow, and go in the U.S. by exploring how metropolitan areas drive the flow of goods domestically and internationally, revealing, among other things, Brookings said, “significant implications for national, regional, and local infrastructure policy.”
     The first report titled “The Great Port Mismatch: U.S. Goods Trade and International Transportation” focuses on the role air, land, and sea ports play on the movement of goods at a regional level and the spatial mismatch between a port’s jurisdictional home and its economic importance to the country as a whole, making the point that only about 4 percent of goods moving through ports start or end in the port’s local market.
     Other findings include:
          •  Ports primarily serve customers in other parts of the U.S.
          •  The largest 25 port complexes in the U.S. move 85 percent of all internationally traded goods.
          •  Average international goods travel over 1,000 miles within the U.S. to get from port to market, underscoring how international trade relies on the domestic freight network.
     Report Number Two from Brookings, titled “Metro Modes: Charting a Path for the U.S. Freight Transportation Network,” examines the movement of goods via trucks, railroads, airports, waterways, and pipelines between different regions nationally, revealing the need for more targeted freight investments. Findings include things many in air cargo already know, but since these reports are aimed at federal, state, and local leaders and businesses tasked to support more efficient goods movement, the impact on improving infrastructure could benefit everybody in the supply chain.
     Findings in “Metro Modes” include:
          •  Trucks dominate domestic goods trade, carrying up to 75 percent of the value and weight of commodities.
          •  Air modes tend to move high-value commodities like precision instruments, and railroads and pipelines specialize in raw materials like energy.
          •  Between neighboring metro areas like Dallas/Houston and Washington/Baltimore, trucks can account for 90 percent or more of freight activity, and this mode heavily influences their own and national infrastructure needs.
     “As congestion costs rise and budgets for infrastructure investments shrink, these reports shed light on priority infrastructure assets and corridors,” Brookings said.
More: http://www.brookings.edu/projects/global-cities.aspx
or www.jpmorganchase.com/globalcities.
Geoffrey

(FlyingTypers’ Asia/Pacific Editor-in-Chief SkyKing has spent the majority of the past six weeks in Nepal covering the story of the devastating earthquakes. He has also become part of the story, raising money to help people in the stricken nation.
     Along the way, Sky has filed an emotional, startling, and fact-filled dossier of stories that we have faithfully sent out to you, dear readers.
     Now Sky (he is the guy in the pictures wearing white shorts) tells of his fundraising efforts and describes just how much it meant when many of us in air cargo dug deep into our pockets and hearts to send some relief to people in bind far worse than most can imagine. We add our ‘thanks for the lift’ to everyone who followed this remarkable story and sent their support.)
     Thanks so much to all of you for all your financial support and encouragement for Suman’s Story – Direct Aid for Nepal. https://www.facebook.com/sumansstory
     We’ve had the craziest, most rewarding, humbling, saddest, and sheer knackering three days I’ve ever experienced.
     The funds you all gave have helped hundreds of families—I know I’m supposed to be a journalist but I really can’t express how grateful I am for all your support.
     Here’s the best summary of how and where your money has been spent I can summon in my exhausted, dust-cloaked state . . .

     Day 1: We delivered 586 food packs to Palchok—one per family.
     Thanks to your efforts and those of Tariq and the guys at Bye Bye Plastic Bags, with a final delivery of rice Palchok will now be able to see out the monsoon safely.
     We also have the groundwork in place to pay for and supply a medical clinic there, more of which we will report later.
     The chicken farm that will provide the village with a collective income is also progressing well—good idea, Tariq Batanoni and Bye Bye Plastic Bags!
     Day 2 and 3: Suman and his team identified a string of villages far to the northeast of Kathmandu that had not received any aid since the April 25 earthquake devastated large parts of the country and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and without access to food or medical aid. Considering how badly their own lives have been affected by the quakes, to set off to a remote part of the country to help others was an act of extraordinary selflessness by the villagers of Palchok and their friends—my admiration for their bravery, organization skills, humor under duress, and indefatigability has no limits.

I'm fine, back home from Nepal as you read this—at least I got to leave.      It was slightly overwhelming and very hard work.      Village after village decimated. The bigger towns looked like they'd been hit by mortars.      Rubble everywhere, but some buildings absolutely fine and the ones nearby collapsed or leaning horribly.      Lots of people living with no shelter or under a tarpaulin.      Very proud nation with everyone trying to do their best though, and always very generous.      Lovely people and a beautiful country! —SkyKing

     They really are the heroes in all this.
     Take a bow:
     Suman Khadka, 19
     Ramesh Khadka, 29
     Pawan Karki, 19
     Arjun Khadka, 41
     Mahendra Mijar, 21
     Suman and the guys organized for an early pick up of more than 250,000kg of rice to be loaded into two trucks.
     Unfortunately, the bloke who was supposed to open the rice shop for loading failed to turn up.
     By the time he did, time was running short. When we did finally get loaded and underway it quickly emerged that one of the truck drivers was new to driving on Nepal’s treacherous roads—he hit two bikes in the first ten kilometers before we even reached the mountains.
     Luckily no one was injured, but a new driver was required.
     Unfortunately this also meant getting a new truck and transporting 400 sacks of 30kg rice between them.
     Seven hours later, traveling along a single track mountain road through town after town, where most of the houses were rubble and people were sleeping in makeshift tents, Paul, Suman’s team of seven, and I arrived at our ‘hotel’—a communal tarpaulin shelter where we all shared beds or slept on tables.
     Our hosts had previously owned a thriving hotel in Jiri, but when this crumbled they were left homeless.
     We were all incredibly grateful just to have somewhere covered to sleep, but the welcome we got and hospitality received were wonderful.
     The next day was supposed to be simple. We were to visit three villages and deliver 30kg rice bags to 800 families, enough to feed each family for 2-3 weeks.
     But this is Nepal and nothing is simple. After arranging and distributing our first two drops, our final village was ‘just on the other side of the valley.’
     We took a shortcut.
     The shortcut took 2.5 hours along a mountain track that was like driving along a riverbed with sheer drops on either side. We don’t think we covered more than ten miles and for the most part it was faster to walk while our heroic driver maneuvered our 4x4 (but with only two of the wheels working) with the sort of control that only the most skilled Nepalese mountain specialist could manage with any safety. We honestly owe him our lives.

     The journey was worth it, though. When we arrived at Chyama the entire village had converged to welcome us. We were presented with garlands by all the kids and, after a round of speeches, we started distributing 400 30kg rice sacks using a fair and orderly system set up by Suman and the village head.
     Chyama has 800 families, 8 schools, and one clinic.
     For most of the last six weeks it has been inaccessible.
     Indeed, the UN’s website says it still is, so we really were heading off into the unknown.
     The village leader explained that 95% of the buildings had been destroyed on April 25 and everyone was sleeping outdoors.
     One aid delivery had reached the village over the last six weeks but what it had provided was totally inadequate.
     When the rains trigger more landslides, Chayama will be totally inaccessible again.
     The gratitude of the village was humbling in the extreme and we all left feeling overwhelmed by the amazing welcome we had received and guilty there was not more we could do.
     The village head said the rice we delivered could be the difference between life and death in the coming weeks for many of the poorest families.
     They are not even thinking about rebuilding yet, just survival.
     Today we will help one poor old lady who, due to Nepal’s Byzantine land ownership and tenancy system, has been left with no food, shelter, or means to feed herself. Because she was a tenant, any government relief must go to the landlord.
     Because her old house no longer exists, according to the rules she is not eligible for government help because she has no fixed abode.
     That’s Nepalese bureaucracy for you! In effect she is caught in a tragic Catch 22 situation that has rendered her a non-person.
     With the money we still have left, Suman and his team will arrange for a shelter to be built for her and supply her with food for the coming months.
     Updates on how this project proceeds will follow.
     Thanks so much to all of you who have contributed.
     I know there are many great causes out there but the money you have spent through ‘Suman’s Story’ has empowered Nepalese people to help their families and some of the most impoverished villages in the country. We had no overhead and paid our own costs so every penny has reached those who need it most.
     For myself, Paul Winslow, Suman, and the guys, this has been a crazy adventure none of us will ever forget.
     The thanks we have received has been impossibly humbling and left me with a sense that there is far more we can still achieve in Nepal by empowering Suman and his team to continue their great works.
     Paul, Tariq, Bye Bye Plastic Bags, and I have plans to help set up a permanent clinic in Palchok as the first step to rebuilding the town.
     But for this we will need more funding.
     We will release details shortly of how we will achieve this and what it will cost. But for now, thanks again to you all from the bottom of my heart!
SkyKing

Vital Views 1975-2015  

    The year 2015 marks our 40th year in the world of air cargo news reporting—first as Air Cargo News and now as FlyingTypers.
   In 2015 we are fortunate to present the writings of the nearly 102-year-old Richard Malkin, who remains the first air cargo reporter in history (circa 1942) and now serves as FlyingTypers' Senior Editor.
     Here Richard recalls the views of executives over the four decades.

Cornelia Fischer, economist, International Civil Aviation Organization, stated in a detailed report, an ICAO study shows “the economic impact of the air transport industry and other civil aviation activities is far-reaching because of its multiplier effect. This impact is not always a positive stimulus: the events of September 1, 2001, and subsequent major developments which impacted adversely on aviation demonstrate the negative domino effect that the air transport industry can have on national and global economies.”

. Michael Ducker, vice president – international, Federal Express, addressing members of the Chicago Aviation Summit,
let loose a barrage of arguments in favor of an open-skies policy for U.S. – Hong Kong air trade. Total freedom of Hong Kong’s skies would have a positive effect on its air transportation facilities. Pointing to the winds of change in world trade during the six decades since the Chicago convention that set new freedoms for air transport, the passage of time has transformed them as “shackles, affirming the concept of closed air markets.”

Giorgio Laccona, chairman and CEO, IJS Global, described in an interview a shipping public distant from its past, now fully abreast of air freight economics and alert to airline offers. Then, too, today’s air shipper is a far more demanding creature.

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