Category Archives: Aviation

“We must always keep it in mind that we have pharma and agriculture sector ready to take the lead. The country’s pharmaceutical sector has great potential and government must encourage it by investing in R&D and by providing better facilities and incentives to the private sector to enhance its production for exports.” says Vipin Vohra, Chairman, Continental Carriers at CargoTalk’s, first digital conclave. “This is the right time to maximise opportunity by being innovative, utilising skilled labour, bringing professionalism, networking aggressively and adopting PR strategies along with identifying the latest technology,” he continues. “Secondly, there should be more collaboration and cooperation among each other in order to reduce expenses wherever we can,” he adds.

Alitalia Airlines has launched its first cargo flight from Mumbai to New York via Rome [Mumbai (BOM) – Rome (FCO) – New York (JFK)] with B777-300 / B777- 200 aircraft on June 20, 2020. The airline would be operating a weekly P2C flight on Mumbai – Rome – New York route with B777 aircraft without cabin seats. It is scheduled to operate every Saturday/Sunday, offering a capacity of 50 tonnes per flight. With its strong and robust network, the airline is offering onward connectivity into Europe & USA. Air Logistics Group is the cargo GSSA for Alitalia in India since 2018 with the airlines having had a successful daily operation DEL- FCO pax flight through A330 aircraft in the pre-Covid times. Deepak Kumar, Cargo Manager – Western India, Air Logistics Group, says, “The customers in Mumbai are delighted to have the Italian bird flying back to Mumbai and have given a stupendous welcome to the carrier which is clearly reflected by an overwhelming response to the capacity offered, with the first flight taken off with a whopping success of full capacity utilisation for Italy, Europe and USA.” “We are here to serve during these challenging times and assure our complete support to our cargo fraternity because we firmly believe that problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines,” he adds.

To give its customers more autonomy when booking, schedule searching and submitting claims online, American Airlines Cargo has added new features to its digital booking platform aacargo.com. “Our new technology platform allows for a better experience for our customers, enables them to make bookings at their convenience and offers more flexibility and efficiencies behind the scenes for our team members,” says Angela Hudson, Head of Transformation, American Airlines Cargo. The latest new tools will both streamline and advance business through reduced paper use and an increasingly more touchless system. This type of efficient foundation allows for greater flexibility and speed to market for new products and solutions to continue to provide the best in customer service. The entire technology transition began more than three years ago and involves more than 8,000 team members in cargo and airport operations, and more than 30,000 customers.

Ajay Singh, CMD, SpiceJet, has said that they have been able to sail through the crisis owing to their cargo operations. “At SpiceJet, we tried to take a different path, wherein when there was no passenger traffic, we decided early on to use our aircraft for cargo business, which was our most significant reaction to this COVID crisis. In fact, in the last 2-3 months, we have emerged as India’s largest air cargo airline by a very long way. We carried close to 20,000 tonnes of cargo in the last 2 months and this includes flights we have done under Lifeline UDAN, all the medicines, medical equipment, and PPE kits that we got from different parts of the world into India. Also, outside, we sent medicines, fruits, vegetables and other things in support of our farming community and maritime community etc. Hence, we’ve tried to play a positive social role and we were trying to keep ourselves commercially afloat by expanding our cargo operations,” he said.

LATAM Cargo has expanded its pharma network by adding four new transit stations. The transit stations provide access to Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Ecuador and Paraguay and allow LATAM Cargo to offer more routes for different origins-destinations. Cristina Onate, Vice President – Marketing and Product Development, LATAM Cargo, says, “The goods we transport with our pharma solutions to Latin America are delicate and extremely sensitive to temperature deviations.” The carrier has opened pharma transit stations in Miami, Santiago, Buenos Aires and a second entry point in Sao Paulo over the last three months. This allows the carrier to expand the number of routes it can serve with its CEIV certified pharma service.

Dachser has announced that the company has invested in its location in Nuremberg, including expansion of transit terminals for industrial goods and food by over 5,200 m2. The company is investing EUR 22.5 million in the project, the construction phase of which was completed at the end of May. “Over the past ten years, our location in Nuremberg has seen positive development in the areas of industrial goods and food, as well as in warehousing. So much so that we have now reached the limits of our capacity with the existing facility,” says, Bernhard Engel, Branch Manager – European Logistics, Dachser’s Nuremberg. The company is creating extra parking spaces for trucks and employee vehicles, in addition to enlarging the office building by 1,200 m2.

In order to facilitate digital transformation of airlines, cargo.one and IBS Software has announced their strategic partnership. The two companies have been working together to create custom integrations for leading airlines, including Etihad Cargo and Nippon Cargo Airlines, to successfully help them accelerate their digital distribution capabilities. As COVID-19 forces airlines and forwarder sales teams to adapt to a new normal, cargo.one has reported a record increase in usage and demand. Moritz Claussen, Founder & Managing Director, cargo.one, says, “We see that COVID-19 has been a catalyst for digital transformation within the air cargo industry. This is reflected in the now over 1,500 forwarder branches using cargo.one on a daily basis. “Furthermore, we see that distributing capacity online at live rates is an essential part of the recovery roadmap for many airlines. Together with IBS Software we have been building a proven plug and play solution that empowers all IBS airlines to seamlessly integrate with cargo.one and get access to our ever-growing user base. It will allow airlines to boost sales online and almost instantly relieve overloaded sales staff.” Ashok Rajan, SVP & Head of Cargo & Logistics, IBS Software, says “We truly believe that leveraging online distribution is the way forward for airlines to emerge faster and stronger from the crisis and we are excited to enable these connections with innovation leader cargo.one and our state of the art technology.”

Bollore Logistics India has successfully moved aid & relief and healthcare shipments from Mumbai, to Yangon, Myanmar. The company has successfully organised these tasks through two charter flights. The first flight was carried out on April 29, 2020 with Spice Jet using Boeing 737-700F and the second flight was operated on May 15, 2020 on Indigo’s Airbus A 320, a passenger aircraft used as a makeshift freighter. India team closely monitored the charter planning and cargo execution to ensure cargo readiness for loading prior to flight arrival to avoid any last-minute delays and rollovers. The team proposed the most economical and time bound solution in close coordination with Myanmar, to the clients who awarded their shipments from various locations within India.

To end its dependency on others, like Rehmankheda in Lucknow, the district Varanasi has taken a step ahead with the efforts to get its own packhouse. The step was taken after the success in export of fresh vegetables and fruit from farms of Varanasi and adjoining region in the markets of Dubai and London. The state government has already sanctioned the construction of a packhouse by mandi parshad in Varanasi and land is been identified in the industrial estate of the UP State Industrial Development Authority (UPSIDA) in Karkhaiyo area. According to Deepak Agrawal, Divisional Commissioner, Varanasi Divison, “A cold storage of 30 metric tonne storage capacity is already being developed at the Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport.” He adds, “We have started talks with the officials of Airport Authority of India to allow establishing a temporary packhouse of two to three metric tonne capacity with the same cold storage and after a final decision is taken by the AAI, the temporary packhouse would be made operational till a full-fledged packhouse is established at Karkhioyao.”

GMR Hyderabad International Airport has appointed Pradeep Panicker as the new Chief Executive Officer. Panicker has replaced SGK Kishore in this role. Prior to this, he was the deputy CEO of GHIAL, since January 2018. Before that, he served the GMR Delhi International Airport in different roles and responsibilities for 13 years since he joined in 2004. Prior to this role, Panicker was also associated with Mumbai SEZ Development Company, Feedback Ventures and L&T Finance. Domestic operations have been going on in the GMR-led Hyderabad International Airport, ever since the Centre decided to resume operations of domestic flights.