PayCargo ad


emo
FlyingTypers Logo
#INTHEAIREVERYWHERE
Family Aid 2020
   Vol. 19 No. 46
Wednesday June 17, 2020
linespacer
linkedin
facebook
Instagram
twitter
If you have any words you’d like to share, any of your own playlists you’d like us to help distribute, or other content that has helped you navigate this difficult time, please share them with us. Air Cargo News FlyingTypers hopes to be like an online hearth for our cargo family. #AirCargoCoronaContent

ATC Celebrates ANA
  
Max Conrady, Hiro Murai and Ingo Zimmer Max Conrady, (L) Fraport, Senior Vice President Cargo; Hiro Murai, ANA Cargo, Manager Cargo EMEA; and Ingo Zimmer CEO, ATC Aviation Services after the water cannon salute, celebrate ANA Cargo’s first dedicated Boeing 777 freighter arrival from Tokyo to Frankfurt on Wednesday June 10.
  ANA Cargo’s June Frankfurt-Tokyo weekly freighter service goes Tuesdays (NH 8598 FRA-NRT ETD 15:40LT – ETA 10:05 +1).
  For the record, the first flight moved 68 tons of general cargo. Return flight to Japan tipped in at 88 tons.
  ATC Aviation Services AG with its head office in Frankfurt was established in 1971.
  ATC’s worldwide portfolio of more than 70 airlines in 32 countries in 2020 adds up to unequalled GSA/GSSA refinement and leadership in the air freight industry.
More click here.

Lothar Moehle


     When I am about to get depressed by the isolation imposed by the pandemic, Geoffrey comes on line and asks me to do something for him, thus providing me with an antidote as no healthcare could.
     This time he asked me to think who would be my “airfreight heroes”.
     I was unwittingly a few steps away from the solution already and “my brilliant friend” Antonella Straulino of Fedespedi pointed it out to me.
     When she mentioned our good friend Lothar Moehle, the combination of Lothar and hero set the aircraft inside me on the runaway. I went back to my childhood heroes and my mind started spinning as the propeller does in front of the airplane’s nose.


League of Super Heroes

     Lothar and Mandrake were my dream-heroes. They shared the space in my heart with Superman and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Batman. They were the perfect couple fighting for positive ideals, superhuman strength and magic.
     Such dreams amply compensated for not having the right brand of shoes and made us happy anyway. Today these childhood dreams can still shed a colourful light in the otherwise gloomy days of pandemic isolation.
     As I said, thanks to Antonella, another Lothar came to my rescue this time: Lothar Moehle of DB Schenker and he started the conversation by introducing DB Schenker, the German conglomerate that was ranked by one survey as number 3 in the world last year. In other words, this is one of the top LSP’s in business and certainly has first-hand information on how air cargo runs in these challenging times.


Service Experience At The Right Time

     Lothar Moehle is the Chair of the CLECAT Air Logistic Institute and Board Member of Cargo iQ, he is also Director for AVSEC and Governance Global Air Freight in DB Schenker.


Reaching Across Borders

     Lothar has been a friend for a number of years, starting when I was at CLECAT in Brussels and afterwards when I was at FIATA in Zurich.
     AVSEC brought us together as we kept meeting at the same places all the time. I remember I was always insisting that we should talk about “safety and security” at some time. This concept comes in handy right now, in this time when the threats have changed, perhaps becoming even greater than before and encompassing both security and safety issues connected with passengers’ heath. I had always been hoping for a holistic approach to safety and security, and that was clear in my conversations with Lothar, whom I respected for being immensely knowledgeable, and always willing to share in and work for the “common good”.
     So my first question was: Lothar, who would your heroes be in this period, which is posing challenges we had never thought possible and would have surely preferred to avoid?


Health Care Heroes At Every Turn

     Lothar was extremely clear in this answer, which left no room for doubt in its simple and matter of fact approach:
     “In the present pandemic situation, heroes are in my opinion the nurses, the doctors and the care workers in the world, who are often disregarding their own safety and health to help people in desperate need.
      “You may add to this category others, such as the women and men working in the offices of airlines, forwarders and GHA’s, who cannot work from home, but who are determined to get the shipments moved to where the goods are required. Many of our staff have been allowed to work from home in order to limit the risk for them and the community, but not everyone had that option.”


Front Line People Going Above & Beyond

     “Also importantly involved on the front line are women and men working in warehouses, the loaders on the PAX aircrafts and freighters, who are working hard – often at odd hours and weekends – to do their utmost to get personal protective equipment distributed globally, in order to alleviate the shortage of PPE which has emerged almost everywhere in the world. Let us add to this the truck drivers, who are now working seven days a week and find next to no respite when they want to stop for a coffee or bio-break: shops and facilities are closed because of the lockdown, so they count themselves lucky when they find what they need, yet they do not give up. These are in my view today’s heroes and we should be grateful to them.”
     Lothar’s reply was almost just the same, multifaceted yet inevitable, when asked what must the air cargo business do now and post-pandemic to come back stronger than ever. In the subtext of his answer we can hear the usual passengers vs. cargo tête-à-tête chiming in. Maybe air cargo will show more resilience than passengers this time? Maybe.


Things To Come Post Pandemic

     Lothar said, “the future look of the air industry will be evolving, in time progressively moving a distance away from the immediate picture, which is rather gloomy at the moment. Airlines have grounded a large number of planes due to the lack of passengers and this simply means fewer wings in the air; switching back to pre-corona virus flight schedules will most likely not happen within the foreseeable future, it may take much longer than we would want, due to the lack of passenger demand.
     “Even when restrictions are eased, tourists will most likely stay in their own countries for fear of the virus and possibly a number of other uncertainties, such as new travel restrictions and flight embargoes between and within countries.”

Mike White, Lothar Moehle and Phil Sims


A Cautious Way Forward

     “A cautious approach will prevail, at least initially, with careful planning of tourist travel. Job losses or the fear of losing jobs may also play a part in making the potential traveller less inclined to spend on travel, when other priorities are more urgent.
     “Business travel could also start in much smaller numbers as companies have seen that a lot of face-to-face meetings can be done virtually online and do not require all the travelling we were used to. Companies might also have to reduce business travel due to economic constraints.”


Comeback Will be Measured

     On my questioning look, Lothar added the following observation: “Once flights are back to normal, or something like it, planes will not be fully booked initially, and it is likely that more routes with planned stop-overs will need to be scheduled, so the development of a viable route may create a different paradigm in flight schedules.
     “Airlines realize from the present pandemic that the cargo operation is the only lifeline they have right now. This hopefully will result in airlines’ attention and investments to the cargo sector of the business in their future strategies.
     “This also means that the airlines will need to have much more awareness of the requirements of cargo operations on the ground and at the airports. This area of business could become more attractive in the future.”
     I asked Lothar whether anything of what we are accustomed to will definitely be lost.
     “Older (e.g. B 747) and / or uneconomic (e.g. A 380) aircraft will be retired far earlier than initially planned or will be consigned for long-term storage to the desert. In some trade lanes the deployment of wide-body aircraft might not be a viable option any longer. Instead, narrow body aircraft will be used more regularly and this will lead automatically to insufficient cargo capacity.
     “In response to the greater demand, more airlines might be willing to convert passenger planes into CAO’s (cargo aircraft only) in order to make use of the existing grounded aircraft fleet, pilots and crews.”


Lessons Learned

     “The industry must review the over arching lessons learned; every stakeholder has to draw their own conclusion, but chances are that the industry has already, or will change drastically in the future: some importers might even review their JIT strategy and policy by keeping either a larger stock “nearby” or relocating production, so as to develop a certain degree of independence from the transportation links, regardless of the mode of transport.”


Watch The Importers

     Lothar Moehle also suggested that, “on a short term basis, it might very well be that some importers will change from Air Freight to Ocean Freight or Rail for their transportation needs, due to the lack of available cargo space and rate structure. Subject to the downturn of economies on a global basis, this might have a long-term effect on the transportation costs overall, as well as on the space made available. Let us face it, disrupted supply-and-demand patterns may take longer than days or weeks to return to the ‘new normal’.”


Hope & Faith Needed In New Tech

     Lothar was adamant on one point: “As the entire industry is changing substantially, the present contraction in business will lead to the arrival of new technologies in a quicker manner. Resources, be it in financial means or in personnel and facilities, will be even scarcer, but the requirements to do business will be ever increasing. All this means fresh investments in CAO (cargo aircraft only), ground handling equipment, but also in IT infrastructure such as eAWB, messaging capabilities such as XML standard, tracking & tracing in real time, IATA One Record initiative, etc. The industry must stand up to this challenge and we believe Logistics Service Providers will be doing just that.”
     Thanks to my interlocutor’s kindness I had a bit more time to ask an open question: what have we learned with Cargo In Cabin (CIC)?


Lothar MoehleCargo In Cabin Assesment

     Lothar Moehle was quick to offer his view: “Nobody can ignore that the air cargo industry can react quickly to profoundly changed circumstances. What we see in this evolving scenario is that some stakeholders in the industry are trying to implement new, often higher fees and are not necessarily honouring their existing, long standing contracts, invoking Force Majeure. It is clear that in some cases this is a behaviour that is an attempt to mitigate the current situation, however it is without sufficient reflection on the consequences it has on other stakeholders.”


Proactive Governments Welcome

     However, Lothar showed appreciation for the understanding of the governing bodies:      “Authorities, such as the EU Commission and the National and Customs Authorities have been, by and large, very proactive and flexible to ensure that urgently needed Healthcare Supplies could be transported without administrative red-tape. Operating a PAX aircraft for cargo only is subject to licensing by the appropriate authorities, in line with national and international regulatory requirements, such as the number and training of the flight attendants on board. In many situations the necessary solutions were found.”


CIC New Brand of Hand Work

     On the other hand, some practical issues were also underscored: “The operational costs of a PAX flight are higher due to the required double flight crews on board, while still having a payload which is nowhere near a full-freighter’s. As long as the rates are sufficient, it is a viable option for the airlines right now, as the aircraft is there anyway.           “The more PAX cargo space is available, the greater impact this might have on the overall rate levels. This being said, due to the construction of PAX aircrafts (e.g. door size, strength of floor) the usage of the plane of the cabin is limited to very light cargo. Also the loading and unloading by hand requires a greater number of loaders. In the current situation having to observe the so called ‘social distancing’ rules, has an impact on the productivity of the process.”


A Temporary Path?

     It was clear to me that my interlocutor was not seeing the use of passenger aircraft for cargo usage as a regular feature in our future business, so I did not wish to insist on this point, which can probably be viewed as a somersault in a business that has taken a really bad and unexpected blow.
     There is also another way of looking at this: the airline business is not showing any intention of giving up or spending much time whining and wailing; on the contrary, it is showing us the remarkable resilience of the fighter who never throws the sponge. There has been quite some debate on the issue of combi aircraft, which is another way of looking at the same question: passengers and cargo, how do we make both of them fly in future, and in what mix?


A Holistic Approach

     Lothar's response is, “that the ‘holistic approach’ will prevail. We have already seen this after 9/11; I clearly remember the moment when we had no idea how we could make people fly safely again, but in a relatively short time we devised the systems which made it possible. I am confident the same will happen again this time. Billions of travellers have adapted to being scanned and checked for security reasons each and every time they take another plane: what seems today a completely normal procedure was inconceivable before 2001.
     “In my view passengers (and the industry) will adapt to the novel requirements that will ensure their safety on board. Time is what is needed for change to set in and for people to adapt. It will not be very long: everything will be slightly different and will appear to be normal to everyone again, trust me. And in the long run, this will put cargo back where it was: in the hold.”


Marco SorgettiEpilogue:

     I am very grateful to my friend Lothar for patiently taking my probing questions. His insights have been instructive and have provided food for thought for all of us. My congratulations to the exquisite professional and to his successful enterprise.
Marco L. Sorgetti


FlyingTalkers podcastTune in to
FlyingTalkers

Qatar Airways Knows It Can

What's Next For Airports


Chuckles for June 17, 2020


SpaceX Series

  “Keep looking up” are some words that people might take to heart especially after the apparently flawless performance of that recent U.S. SpaceX Rocket launch which transported NASA astronauts Dragon Crew Doug Hurley and Bob Behnkenon on a four-day trip, flying up for coffee at the International Space Station and then returned the NASA Astronauts home safely on Thursday June 4.

Freedom 7
Alan Shepard Jr.  Never mind that manned U.S. space travel in 2020 debuts a vehicle that recalls the Mercury Space capsule Freedom 7 that was plopped onto the top of a redstone rocket, basically a guided missile that Alan Shepard, Jr. flew in 1961, pioneering U.S. space flight.
  The four-seater Dragon Space ships are totally cool with interiors that look vaguely like the inside of the four seater Tesla vehicles that delivered the fliers to their takeoff at Pad 39 at Cape Canaveral Florida.
  Wonder if the computers from the Tesla interface with the Dragon?
  Very cool and uplifting!
Geoffrey

Pumping Traffic
The International Federation of Freight Forwarding Associations (FIATA) and the Korea International Freight Forwarders Association (KIFFA), announced that the FIATA World Congress (FWC) 2020 scheduled to take place in Busan, October 19-24, 2020 has been cancelled but will be held there in 2022, at a date to be announced.
Byung Jin “The global pandemic has caused us to postpone our event until 2020,” declared Byung-Jin, Chairman of KIFFA. While saddened by this delay, we wish our colleagues good health and deliverance from this terrible pandemic, while looking ahead to greeting everyone in Busan, a welcoming, exciting city of leading port & logistics, arts and culture, in the Republic of Korea.” Next year (2021) the FIATA World Congress will be held in Brussels, Belgium October 26-29.FIATA also said FWC 2023 will be held in Panama City, Panama . . .
Harald GloyTell us something that we already didn’t know Dept.: “Air cargo operations at Frankfurt Airport are running at full speed during the crisis,” said Harald Gloy, Chairman of the Board of Air Cargo Community Frankfurt e.V. and Board member of Lufthansa Cargo AG. “We moved 3.5 billion respiratory protection masks and other PPE equipment across 22,000 shipments plus medical equipment and pharmaceuticals, as well as urgently required industrial goods, post, packages and food for the German and European markets. Demand for (inbound) cargo capacity (PPE) remains high.” Exports from Germany have fallen by 20 percent since March. That means that the most crucial air cargo is missing. “We are a long way from normal (two-way) flight operations,” said Gloy.
 
Subscribe to FlyingTypers

Braathens Safe

     The most colorful and truly unusual Cargo In Cabin (CIC) movement of this COVID-19 era occurred when Norway’s Thomas Waerner and his sled dogs won the world-famous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on March 18.
     Thomas, who won the grand prize of $51000.00 and a new truck and the great honor of topping the rugged sled dog race across the wilds of Alaska, packed himself and his winning team up, and all hitched a ride home aboard a former Everts Air Cargo DC-6 converted back to passenger configuration. That was a 50-hour (lapsed time) flight via Yellowknife, Canada as the aircraft was ferried back to where it first served as a line passenger aircraft and flag carrier for the legendary Norwegian Braathen’s Safe Airlines.
     The trip back home brought the ancient aircraft from front line cargo service at Everts Air Cargo in Alaska to a permanent home at Flyhistorik Flight Museum in Sola.

Braathens Safe

     Everts replaced the pax windows in the aircraft and the original Braathen livery, but the interesting thing here is that once the conversion was completed the aircraft like so many others at work right now for airlines around the world was pressed into “cargo only” use.
     Everts, it should be mentioned, is the legendary old-time all-cargo airline, based in Anchorage that is a true lifeline for scores of communities. The company operates a mixed fleet of vintage C-46 Avgas guzzlers and newer generation kero-powered aircraft.


MD-88s MD-90s in U.S. Say Goodbye

     Today Everts Air Cargo in a “modernizing mode” operates an MD-88 in cargo configuration.
     The MD-88 aircraft and its series of twinjets were in the news elsewhere recently.
In the U.S. hundreds of these aircraft have left service at American and Delta in less than a year.
     Delta operated the world’s largest fleet of MD-88s and newer reincarnations of what was once simply called the DC-9.
     Delta dumped its entire fleet of the type, or more than 185 aircraft of that series.
     Delta said coronavirus did that aircraft in, and that may be true. But what has happened to Delta could also equally be about the size of the airline fleet.
     The MD series MD-88/90 and DC-9 dated back to the 1960s.
     Since last September, with the retirement of the last American Airlines MD-88s, the world market for used aircraft of the entire MD series must total 400 units.
     The twinjet could be the backbone of a new passenger airline, or alternatively converted to cargo as a good option for enterprising air cargo carriers. The secret of that aircraft’s longevity has to do with the brilliantly thought out design of the aircraft and its two engine configuration as compared to B727’s trijet.
     Today two updated jet engines pushing you skyward are always better than three.


Donald Douglas Lent A Hand

Donald Douglas     Don’t forget Donald Douglas, whose DC-3 taught the world how to fly. Douglas was still alive, kicking ass and taking names when both the DC-8 and DC-9 were created. Douglas, an absolute genius waited and worked on the DC-8 passenger jet development to compete with the B707 and then some years after the B727 rushed into market, Douglas delivered the DC-9.
     In both cases the DC-8 and DC-9 are acknowledged as better aircraft than the B707 and B727. The proof of that is whilst the Boeing 707 and 727 no longer fly schedules anywhere, there are multiples of scheduled MD-80, 88/90s and DC-8s (cargo), which first came out during the same era as the Boeings, still in service today around the world.
Geoffrey


Playing For Change Chan Chan

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
FT052720
Vol. 19 No. 43
Biometrics Busting All Over
Forwarder Dilemma Post COVID-19
Chuckles for May 27, 2020

FT060320
Vol 19. No. 44
Pay Me My Money Down
Always Issa
Chuckles for June 3, 2020
UK Takes A Bite Out of Crime

FT060820
Vol. 19 No. 45
Jessica Tyler Next AA Cargo President
Qatar Airways Knows It Can
Chuckles for June 8, 2020
Virgin Cargo Flying High


Publisher-Geoffrey Arend • Managing Editor-Flossie Arend • Editor Emeritus-Richard Malkin
Film Editor-Ralph Arend • Special Assignments-Sabiha Arend, Emily Arend

Send comments and news to geoffrey@aircargonews.com
Opinions and comments expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher but remain solely those of the author(s).
Air Cargo News FlyingTypers reserves the right to edit all submissions for length and content. All photos and written material submitted to this publication become the property of All Cargo Media.
All Cargo Media, Publishers of Air Cargo News Digital and FlyingTypers. Copyright ©2020 ACM, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
More@ www.aircargonews.com

recycle100% Green