Air Cargo News

March is National Women’s History Month. The National Women’s History Project has put an excellent web site presentation with biographies and items of interest for sale, plus a list of various events of interest at www.nwhp.org.

Margaret Chase Smith

     We were delighted to see that Women’s Month celebrates the life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith, born in Skowhegan, Maine, on December 14, 1897.
     Her entry into politics came through the career of Clyde Smith, the man she married in 1930. Clyde was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1936; Margaret served as his secretary. When Clyde died in 1940, Margaret succeeded her husband. After four terms in the House, she won election to the United States Senate in 1948. In so doing, she became the first woman elected to both houses of Congress.
     Senator Smith moved the nation when she stood up against a member of her own Republican Party.
     On June 1, 1950, she became the first member of the Senate to denounce the tactics used by colleague Joseph McCarthy in his anti-Communist crusade.
     Her speech a “Declaration of Conscience,” should be required reading for people everywhere.
     Later she ran for the office of United States President and made it all the way to the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in 1964, where she became the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the presidency by either of the two major parties. Smith came in second to Barry Goldwater.
     After four terms in the Senate and thirty-two years in Congress, Senator Smith retired to her home in Skowhegan, where she established a library www.mcslibrary.org.
     Margaret Chase Smith died Memorial Day, May 29,1995, at home.
     During the next weeks of March we will honor women in aviation and in air cargo.
     To view our first stories, click on: “Esma Does It Her Way” and “On Top Of The World”.

Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s de-facto flag airline, reports unexpected record passenger and cargo loads for 2002 and net profits of HK$3.98 billion for last year, a six-fold increase on 2001, as passenger load factor rose to a record 77.8 per cent from 71.3 per cent. Cargo volume hit an annual record of 851,000 tons . . . Boeing in a possible takeover of Britain’s BAE Systems, Europe’s biggest defense operator. Aviation industry experts have said a merger between the pair would happen, Odds makers put the takeover as ‘sooner rather than later’ after a private meeting in London, Monday, March 3 between Phil Condit and BAE boss Richard Evans. Mr. Condit was quoted saying: “I happen to believe that we are moving into an era of integrated systems and inter-operability that’s significantly higher than anything we have seen before and we will need to work with companies on this side of the Atlantic in a much closer way than in the past.” Stumbling block in all of this is weak BAE share price, the result of cost overrun scandal, including building of Astute submarine and Nimrod aircraft. Shareholders could hold up a deal by demanding a better price for their shares than could be hoped for out of the stock market. BAE would seem to be a good fit for Boeing which seems to be making much more noise with military issues than it is in the commercial airline passenger jet game recently. BAE does about a quarter of its annual income in the U.S. . . . Elsewhere it may be all about declining numbers and future uncertainty, but at the heart of a great airline “you gotta believe.” The functions

of market approach and new program implementation, continue at American Airlines Cargo. In fact planning new products and service at American Cargo have been going on at an extraordinary pace for the past few years. A product called Expedite.fs that appeared in Europe last autumn, early last month was run up the flag pole south of the border down Brazil way and elsewhere in Latin America. The express product Expedite.fs opened from Brazil, Colombia and Peru, February 3. Launch included Expedite.fs service to Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Viracopos, Brazil; Bogota, Medellin, and Cali, Colombia; and Lima, Peru. AA said that scheduled Expedite.fs service will be offered from other South American origins beginning April 7. Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean will be added during the second and third quarter this year. With the Latin American expansion of Expedite.fs, American is building on the product’s success during its first year. Expedite.fs has averaged more than 1.5 million pounds a month since the product launch in Europe, Japan and Canada in October, and it continues to achieve high

Mark Najarian

marks for boarded-as-booked reliability. “We’re offering Expedite.fs from Latin America because the market has been asking for this type of product,” said Mark Najarian, Vice President-Sales and Marketing for AA Cargo. “We’re responding as the first to offer guaranteed flight specific products from this region. American’s cargo products are built on the core feature of flight specific (fs) service for exceptional speed and reliability. Shorter connections can save as much as a day in international transit times. American takes a distinctive approach with its flight specific offering, as compared with competitors who provide time-definite services. The critical aspect regarding our product offering is that it was created based upon input from our customers,” said Najarian. “For our customers to sell a time-definite product, they need a flight specific product backed with a commitment for reliability. Our product mix allows for effective management of various shipment time-and-weight requirements.” More info.: www.aacargo.com. AA cargo website is no ‘tombstone’ as are others. Neat feature is a quickly downloaded ‘widebody’ schedule everywhere AA flies, that turns, moving your palletized cargo into nothing but a breeze . . .