From the pages of CargoTalk: Air cargo emerges with COVID-19: Saurabh Kumar

Commenting on how COVID-19 has changed the metrics, Saurabh Kumar, CEO, Hyderabad Air Cargo noted, “Airfreight was growing at a very fast pace in Asia-Pacific and particularly in India before COVID-19 happened. Another important thing to note is that in India the bulk of cargo goes via the belly of passenger aircraft and not via dedicated freighter aircrafts. When international flights stopped in the end of the March, we have missed out in the entire belly capacity and the only capacity which was available was freighter. However, in the last three months we have grown significantly as an industry. The freighter capacity which used to be a miniscule 25-30 per cent across the country has more than doubled, primarily on account of several passenger aircrafts getting converted into cargo (P2C) as well more special charters and additional freighters that started coming into India to facilitate the trade. The air cargo industry has seen a very encouraging recovery in the last three months. Having said that, if we compare air cargo with other segments of the industry, we are in a position where we are at least able to see the dreams of complete recovery. The recovery is few quarters away.”