Doldrums? China Southern is banking on a rebound.
    China Southern Cargo is a dedicated player in the cargo markets with a long-term plan. The Sky Team Cargo member currently operates twelve B777Fs and two B747Fs after adding three B777s to its fleet this year. These are operated on 24 freighter routes globally and supplement the carrier’s bellyhold capacity on its fleet of some 500 passenger craft. The carrier also operates its own trucking network in China, Europe, the Middle East, Oceania, Japan, and North America.
     The newest freighters delivered in June and July are now being operated out of China Southern’s Guangzhou hub in southern China on routes to L.A., offering four flights per week, as well as on European services.
    “By launching new freighters, China Southern is going to add flight frequency to some hot markets such as America and Frankfurt,” said a cargo spokesman. “And in the near future, China Southern is going to launch Guangzhou-Paris-Vienna and Guangzhou-London-Frankfurt.”
     He told FlyingTypers that China Southern Cargo’s volumes had been increasing for the last five years and was upbeat about prospects for 2015 despite the gloom that has generally descended on the freight community. “Due to the new freighters that will arrive this year, it is expected that freighter volumes will increase more than 20 percent over 2014,” he said, adding that American markets were performing much better than those in Europe.
     “We will adjust our freighter lanes according to the market demand. The European economy is now in recovery. We will improve service and try different sales ways to deal with the different market.”
     He said membership of SkyTeam Cargo was a big help for China Southern in global markets. “It means standard services and products, and also an international brand image,” he added.
     China Southern is also sticking steadfast with its two-hub strategy, focused on Guangzhou and Shanghai.
     “China Southern is dedicated to building Shanghai as freighter hub, and enhancing Guangzhou hub at the same time by delivering a Canton route strategy and launching more freighter routes to meet the needs of the new market inland. We have already launched Chongqing, Zhengzhou, and Tianjin as our domestic freighter destinations.”
     Guangzhou Baiyun Airport Customs introduced a range of new clearance procedures last year that the spokesman said had improved cargo flows.
     “Customs launched its Import and Export Cargo Manifest Control System in two phases, on January 1, 2013 and May  5, 2014. As from those dates, messages, including advance manifests for international shipments arriving at and departing from CAN, are required to be sent to the Customs system.
     “The traditional Customs declaration and clearance by manual is replaced by electronic methods. Through this new Customs system, Customs officers can implement the electronic supervision of international cargo imported and exported in CAN with the automatically sent release receipt, thereby saving a lot of time required for the Customs clearance process.
     “Based on the new Customs system, CAN Customs later has released some new supervision methods which benefits the carrier and forwarders a lot, such as ‘Declaration in advance, clearance when arrived’ and ‘House airway bill Clearance.’”
     He said if all Customs branches in China rolled out the Import and Export Cargo Manifest Control System in the future, information sharing and cargo flows would be much improved.
     “In the future, the Quality Supervision Inspection in (and) Quarantine and Customs will share the same information provided by carrier and cargo forwarders, which means supervision carried out by inspection and quarantine and Customs can be implemented at one time,” he explained. “At that time, the Customs clearance environment in China will be mostly improved, which will benefit international trade greatly.”
     As well as offering trucking options in its home market from its two hubs, he said China Southern had also been extending its logistics services still further.
     “At present we are cooperating with other companies to design cross-border and domestic producer-customer products,” he added.
SkyKing

    What exactly constitutes a package seems to be obvious—anything used to contain some form of merchandise or goods for the purpose of transport.
     That, however, cannot be a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to the transport of dangerous goods.
     A package or containment of dangerous goods is either in compliance with the requirements of the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations (which, as a field manual, are in reality applied in lieu of the legal foundation, the ICAO Technical Instructions for the Safe Transport of Dangerous Goods by Air) or it isn’t.
     A number of common misperceptions and misunderstandings are the main reason why many shipments of Dangerous Goods are not in compliance with applicable requirements.
     And here is a fact which may elicit surprise: despite the requirement that most shipments of Dangerous Goods transported by air undergo a stringent acceptance check, this safeguard can only verify the outward compliance of a packaging.

What do the regulations say?

     Package (Non-Radioactive Material): The complete product of the packing operation consisting of the packaging and contents prepared for transport.
     Packaging (Non-Radioactive Material): One or more receptacles and any other components or materials necessary for the receptacles to perform their containment and other safety functions and to ensure compliance with the minimum packing requirements of these regulations.
     While Dangerous Goods are divided into nine classes (some with subclasses called divisions) which indicate the nature of the danger, the degree of danger is exhibited by the so-called packing group, indicated by the roman numeral I, II, or III, where I stands for a high or severe danger, II for a medium danger, and III for a low or minor danger.
     One would assume that substances and articles which have not been assigned a packing group are harmless, but nothing could be further from the truth: Explosives in Class 1, Gases in Class 2, radioactive substances in Class 7, as well as self-reactive substances in division 4.1, organic peroxides in division 5.2, and infectious substances in division 6.2 have not been assigned to packing groups for various technical reasons.
     Since January 1st, 2015, dangerous goods that are considered articles (such as Lithium batteries or thermometers with mercury) are also not assigned a packing group.

What’s it all about?

     In simple language, the packing group describes the quality of the packaging and its ability to contain the goods.
     A substance in packing group I with a high degree of danger must subsequently be packed in a packaging rated for packing group I.
     However, most of those substances and articles that have not been assigned a packing group do require packagings of a certain quality.
     The requirement is expressed either within the applicable packing instruction and/or in a special provision applicable to the particular substance or article.
     What’s the difference?
     The regulations differentiate between three types of packagings:

• Combination packagings (consisting of both inner and outer components, such as glass jars packed with cushioning material in a fibreboard box);
• Single packagings (such as jerricans and drums with non-removable heads intended to contain liquids);
• Composite packagings (such as plastic receptacles with an outer steel drums);
• Overpacks.

    It is important to understand that “Overpacks” are not considered a means of packaging, and a considerable number of non-compliant shipments result from such misperception.
     Per definition, an Overpack is “an enclosure used by a single shipper to contain one or more packages to form one handling unit for convenience of handling and stowage.
     “Dangerous Goods packages contained in the Overpack must be properly packed, marked, labelled and in proper condition as required by the regulations.”

Why is that difference important?

     Without a proper understanding of the terms “packing” and “packaging,” shipments of Dangerous Goods will not be in compliance with the regulations.
     For example, substances and articles with high and medium degrees of danger (Packing Groups I and II) are not permitted for transport aboard passenger aircraft when contained in single packagings.
     If paint UN 1263 has a flashpoint of 23 degrees C or less and/or more, it must be shipped as PG I or II, depending on whether its boiling point is above 35 degrees C (PG II) or less (PG I).
     If no more than 5.0 liters of such paint is filled into a plastic jerrican and the jerrican is put into a fibreboard box meeting PG II specifications, it will appear to be a compliant package while in reality it isn’t: A single packaging does not become an inner packaging just because it is contained in a fibreboard box regardless of its specifications. It actually still is a single packaging (the jerrican) in an Overpack (the fibreboard box).
     Likewise, a lithium battery is not an inner packaging for the Lithium contained therein, so one would need to put the battery into an inner packaging (such as a PE bag) and assemble the bags within the outer packaging.
     Also, a “packaging” must, by definition, be marked and labeled as required by the regulations; and packagings contained in Overpacks must all individually meet the packing, marking, and labeling requirements of the IATA Dangerous Good Regulations.

It’s not that simple
     While the regulations usually permit various inner packagings in combination with a large scope of outer packagings for any combination packaging within the applicable Packing Instruction, in reality this is further limited by the packaging test report and the closure instructions provided by the manufacturer of the packaging.
     If the test report permits inner packagings made of plastic and glass in an outer fibreboard box, inner packagings made from metal may not be used, despite the fact that the regulations show them as permitted.  
     As a matter of fact, most manufacturers of United Nations performance-tested packagings clearly indicate that where the shipper uses any other component (including such mundane things as adhesive tape for the closure of fibreboard boxes), the test certificate becomes null and void.
     The issue is not helped by that fact that inner packagings do not bear any UN specification mark (the reason for this being that DG acceptance checks mandated in air transport only verify outer or single packagings) and that, while a pressure test is required for air transport, it is not required for surface transport.
     Likewise, packing instructions require that “substances be compatible with their packagings”—something which is up to the shipper to prove—and that for inner and single packagings containing liquids, “closures must meet the closure requirements” which call for two independent means of securing closures.

But that’s not all

     The air transport sector, unlike other modes of transport, has defined certain environmental parameters that must be considered when packing and shipping dangerous goods.
     Included are a temperature range between -40 degrees C (-40 degrees F) and +55 degrees C (+131 degrees F), low pressure environments between 0.25 and 0.75 bar, as well as vibrations in a range from 5 mm amplitude at 7 Hz to 0.05 mm amplitude at 200 Hz.  
     While these numbers may not seem really impressive, a vibration of 5mm amplitude at 7 Hz translates into a force of 1g acceleration, while a vibration of 0.05mm at 200 Hz means 8g acceleration.
     When it comes to UN performance-tested specification packaging, the old saying that “there’s more to it than what meets the eye” is certainly true—but only where all requirements have been meticulously met.
Jens

     The domestic air cargo sector in India is keen to build on the growth it is experiencing. Even as new airlines begin flying —regional carrier Air Pegasus started operations in the last few months and a few more like Hyderabad-based Turbo Megha Airways and Flyeasy from Bengaluru have received the necessary permissions—India is finally receiving the connectivity it has been wanting for a long, long time.

Connectivity Is King

    That connectivity, according to the Domestic Air Cargo Agents Association of India (DACAAI), the apex national body of the domestic air cargo agents, will go a long way to boost cargo flow from the interiors of the country and vice-versa.
     In fact, air has become a preferred mode of transport for vaccines, medicines, fruits and vegetables, high value electronics, mobile phones, couriers, and the e-commerce sector. Domestic air cargo has been growing faster than international cargo. DACAAI figures point out that domestic air cargo has been growing between 15 and 20 percent year-on-year and during 2013-14 stood at 0.8 mn mt and is 50 percent of international cargo.
     That figure is expected to reach 19.7 mn mt by 2022-23 and according to air cargo stakeholders, domestic cargo will surpass international cargo by the year 2030. 

Where Is The Growth?

    Today, with new airlines coming in, the country will see an increase in the number of aircraft from the 525-plus to 1,000 by 2020. Along with new services, the increase in flight frequencies to Tier-II and III cities will also result in sufficient airlift capacity for domestic cargo.
     For its part, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has been preparing to handle the growth in domestic cargo when the Airports Authority of India (AAI) announced the development of common-user domestic cargo and courier terminals in 24 airports around the country.

The AAI Plan

     The AAI has chalked out plans to boost the domestic cargo market by utilizing passenger terminals at regional airports that see few passengers.
     AAI points out that with the Indian economy opening up, “tremendous growth” had been seen in air cargo movement at airports in the country.
     “Tonnages could go up if basic cargo facilities were created in Tier-II cities that could feed gateway airports.
     “Hence,” says ACCI, “the creation of common-user domestic cargo and courier terminals at 24 airports after “minor modifications.

”Where Is The Action?

    Among those airports where common user facilities were set up or were in the process of establishment are Amritsar, Lucknow, and Varanasi in the north; Ahmedabad, Surat, and Aurangabad in the west; Chennai, Coimbatore, Mangalore, Trichy, Trivandrum, Calicut, Madurai, and Vishakhapatnam in the south; Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi, Gaya, and Raipur in the east; and Guwahati in the north-east.
     The high domestic air cargo tonnages notwithstanding, stakeholders have been raising issues that could retard the growth.

Meetings & Moves

     In a recent move, DACAAI members President Suraj Agarwal, General Secretary Amit Bajaj, Secretary General Co.l R. P. Shukla, and Presiding Officer Arvind M. Nayak met the Minister of State for Civil Aviation Dr. Mahesh Sharma to apprise him about the growth of domestic cargo and the problems the sector was facing.
     Speaking to ACNFT, Suraj Agarwal said: “There is a fantastic growth in air cargo. We don’t have proper infrastructure to handle this type of growth. The growth is much higher than the figures are showing but the growth is getting diverted to the other modes of transportation because we are not able to handle this growth properly.”
     Highlighting the unplanned and ad hoc infrastructure available for air cargo stakeholders, it was pointed out that apart from the metro airports, airports operated by AAI had provided some facilities but they were not properly planned. At many places, these facilities are non-existent or being provided by individual airlines from their airport/city offices, which are scattered, resulting in waste of time and money, according to the DACAAI members.
     Even at the metro airports, the infrastructure was not efficient enough to cater to the present tonnage and growth.
     As a result, domestic air cargo handlers and airlines have been utilizing only 25 percent of their capacity.
     On average, each aircraft has available capacity of around 2,500 kgs but today is only able to record 600 kgs per departure.

Some Further Study    

To achieve efficiency in handling such large tonnages of domestic cargo, DACAAI conducted a study on the need for proper standard centralized domestic cargo facilities that was handed to the MoCA in October last year.
     The study had recommended the creation of common terminals in 32 airports—where domestic air cargo has been witnessing rapid growth—in the first phase. “We would like the Ministry to utilize DACAAl’s experience in handling domestic air cargo,” said President Suraj Agarwal.
     Consulting DACAAI before issuing policy guidelines could accomplish this.
     One of the irksome issues was the multiple charges levied by different airport operators and the establishment of standard facilities, handling, and screening equipment, “so that investments by AAI and JV airports are utilized properly for trade facilitation.” Agarwal also mentioned that “the major hurdle is infrastructure and the cargo warehouses where we accept the cargo are not up to the mark.”
     He acknowledged that the Civil Aviation Ministry had taken initiatives “but those are not enough to handle such type of growth.”

Taxing Situation

     Forwarders also mentioned the heavy burden of service tax—14 percent—on domestic air cargo. General Secretary Amit Bajaj added that service tax was a major issue that needed to be addressed by the government.
     “Service tax charged on air cargo is 14 percent while only 4.2 percent is charged on other modes of transport.
     “On international cargo it is 0 percent.
     “This heavy taxation inflates the cost of air freight and makes it uncompetitive as compared to train and road.”
     He also pointed out the high terminal handling charges: in fact, the charges varied from airport to airport.
     “There are charges by terminals on air freight.
     “We are looking at the increasing charges that should go down,” Bajaj said.

Other Voices Needed

    The trade body also demanded an independent ombudsman who could be approached for grievances, would highlighting issues like service levels by different providers, and sort out bottlenecks in handling domestic air cargo.
     “A robust, exclusive, monitoring, consultation and redressal mechanism needs to be put in place.
     “We would like the Ministry to give us a separate ombudsman,” said Agarwal.
     For his part, Minister Dr. Sharma said that air cargo was one of the top priorities that his ministry was working on.
     “We are working on how to increase the cargo business, how to ease this cargo business.
     “Even after having everything, our share of cargo is very small just because charges are very high and there is poor infrastructure support.
     “We are going to discuss this with the related ministers,” he said. He went on to emphasize: “we are committed towards addressing the problems of air cargo industry in a proper manner,” he said.
Tirthankar Ghosh

     I can remember, when I was very little, paging through one of the airport books my father had written and seeing a picture of a young woman standing next to a small airplane. I think I noticed her because, like me, she had very short hair—at the time, my older brother and I received our haircuts from our father’s barber, so my hair never grew past my ears. She was tall and lithe, possessing a gamine beauty I found enthrallingly relatable. I liked her smart bomber hat with its insectile goggles, her unruly, moppish hair, the ease in which she existed in a tight, cropped leather jacket and buoyant riding pants. There is a relaxed confidence and serenity in pictures of Amelia Earhart. For someone with everything to prove, she projects an air of having absolutely nothing to prove at all.
     The cover of the January issue of Smithsonian Magazine features a gorgeously monochrome Amelia Earhart, and boasts “New Clues, New Controversy” regarding her disappearance. Again, Amelia appears calmly angelic in whitewashed tones of cream and grey and charcoal, and I can’t help but wonder if our fascination with her isn’t simply because she was the first woman aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic, but because every portrait of her projects a dreamy, subdued quality, as if we’re catching someone not meant to be frozen in film. Her knowing look beguiles us. I challenge anyone to look at her picture and not read a chilling intelligence and sadness in those eyes—she looks as if she knew what was coming.
     The Smithsonian article vacillates between the believable and the utterly fantastic. A man named Ric Gillespie harbors a sheet of aluminum he claims originated from Earhart’s Lockheed Electra. The sheet was found in 1991 on Gardner Island in the Pacific Ocean, and Ric and his wife, who founded TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) are convinced it belongs to Earhart’s Lockheed Electra—a replacement piece for a window in the right rear fuselage. They believe Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, crash-landed on Gardner Island. The only problem with this narrative is that, according to Smithsonian Magazine, “Navy planes searched the four-mile-long Gardner Island on July 9 without seeing Earhart.” Still, Ric Gillespie’s theory would fall under the ‘believable’ category.
     Other, less savory, theories abound.
     A retired Pan Am navigator named Paul Rafford Jr., author of Amelia Earhart’s Radio, believes Earhart was working for the U.S. government (specifically, the Navy) and purposefully got lost so that the Navy would have an excuse to search the Pacific without raising any eyebrows amid the rising tensions there. There are other theories that involve Japan. According to Smithsonian Magazine, “In July 1944, Army Sgt. Thomas E. Devine arrived on the just-liberated island of Saipan. At the airfield, he met some Marines guarding a closed hangar they said contained Earhart’s plane.” Sgt. Devine claims he later saw the Electra fly over the island, and that it was later “destroyed by U.S. soldiers.” He believes “Earhart and Noonan flew there by mistake, were captured, imprisoned and executed as spies.”
     There are a few theories that involve Earhart and Noonan’s being captured: “after failing to make landfall at Howland, [they would have] turned northwest” and crashed “760 miles away in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands.” The theory has been accepted as fact in the Marshall Islands: in 1987, the Marshall Islands issued a set of stamps detailing her flight and crash-landing at Mili Atoll. Sgt. Devine’s theory was picked up by Mike Campbell, who wrote Amelia Earhart: The Truth At Last.      Campbell believes Earhart and Noonan landed in the Marshalls in 1937 and were taken to Saipan, where they were likely executed as spies. He also believes we’ve all been fed a pack of lies in order to protect the reputation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who knew where Earhart was “but didn’t want to risk a confrontation with Japan.” In an email to Smithsonian Magazine, Campbell wrote, “Roosevelt could never have survived public knowledge that he failed to help America’s No. 1 aviatrix of the Golden Age of Aviation.”
     Whatever happened to Amelia Earhart, our fascination with her disappearance continues. For Dorothy Cochrane, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, the obsession is enough to drive a person mad. “Now that she’s long gone, why are people holding on to this?” she asked Smithsonian Magazine.
     I can’t speak for all the treasure hunters, conspiracy theorists, historians, and others interested in finding Amelia, but for myself, there is something almost unnatural in how naturally she vanished. One of the most bizarre theories about her disappearance assumes that she survived the war and lived out the rest of her days as a woman in New Jersey named Irene Bolam. We seem to want to revive her in some way—she survived, and lived fully in New Jersey; she was forgotten by one of our most beloved Presidents, and perhaps if we debase him, we can exhume her; she slipped away into the Pacific Ocean, and if we reach deep enough we might raise her up from the watery depths of obscurity.
     For as long as I can remember, when the night gets very deep and dark, and the lights have been turned down in our home in Queens, and a fire in the hearth sends the scent of earthy wood careening across Cunningham Park, adjacent to our home, my father will put on Joni Mitchell’s watery dreamscape, “Amelia.” It’s a song that sounds like flying—it’s full of the hollow airiness of sound that accompanies flight, the soporific din of air passing over fuselage. But it also feels aqueous, as if Mitchell recorded it under water, or at least sang it while bobbing over passive waves at sea. Wherever Amelia Earhart may be, I take comfort in how much of her I find in that song, and those lyrics. She may elude us in every picture, but she can still be found in certain small spaces, if we look hard.
                         “A ghost of aviation
                         She was swallowed by the sky
                         Or by the sea, like me she had a dream to fly
                         Like Icarus ascending
                         On beautiful foolish arms
                         Amelia, it was just a false alarm.”

If You Missed Any Of The Previous 3 Issues Of FlyingTypers
Access complete issue by clicking on issue icon or
Access specific articles by clicking on article title