Category Archives: Aviation

As part of its efforts to reduce waiting times at airports, Jan de Rijk Logistics, the road feeder firm, has signed up with Trucking CDM for to manage slot allocation planning mechanism between truckers and handlers. The industry is under pressure to reduce costs but also achieve faster transit times between European airports, because much of the trucking operation is spent waiting at airports. Stefan Pieters, Manager of Operations & Development, Jan de Rijk, says, “Our biggest challenge boils down to the waiting hours spent at cargo handling facilities, caused by lack of communication and transparency. As there is often no contractual relation between the trucker and the handler both parties operate on behalf of the airline but not directly connected to each other. If we could share data about when the freight is available, the status of vehicle combined shipment information we could communicate much better with the handler thus creating, insight and data sharing for all parties involved.” The Trucking CDM platform provides transparency, predictability and a slot allocation planning mechanism between truckers and handlers. It allows data sharing between the involved stakeholders in regard to the truck movement.

Embarking a ‘1 Million Kilos’ campaign, from July to the end of December, Qatar Airways Cargo will enable charities to use its services to transport humanitarian aid and medical supplies all over the world, free of charge. The airline is donating one million kilograms of freight to selected customers around the world to give to the charities of their choice. This will allow the movement of medical equipment, humanitarian relief and essential products to where they are most needed. “This action was triggered by the Covid-19 crisis. The pandemic is a tragedy for millions of people, and we looked for ways how we, as an airline, could help those in the greatest difficulty. This solution – shipping one million kilos of cargo free of charge – is a firm commitment for QR Cargo. More than just words, we wanted to act and to adopt a comprehensive approach based on actions for the future,” said, Guillaume Halleux, Chief Officer for cargo at Qatar Airways.

Turkish Cargo has launched a new artificial intelligence chatbot, called CARGY, to provide customers round-the-clock updates about the status of their cargo shipments. The artificial intelligence based chatbot ‘Cargy’ gives information about available dates and flights for shipments. Cargy will offer the opportunity to inquire the rate details at its second phase in September and will provide other details related to the cargo at its third phase which will go live in December. The airline has added that it is enhancing and digitising its technological infrastructure to enhance its service quality.

With an aim to offer customers an additional option to pay for their shipments’ destination charges, Delta Cargo has partnered with PayCargo and Unisys. PayCargo’s system has cost benefits directly for Delta Cargo’s customers as it automates data flows, eliminates the need to send paper checks and enables same-day release of cargo. To use the system, customers must first register via the PayCargo website. Customers will then receive updated charges information and efficiently process payments due at the destination. Once payment is made, Delta Cargo is notified in real-time to process the shipment and expedite shipment release. “As we strive to become the airline of choice for our customers, we know that offering secure payment options is one way we can achieve this. We are focused on making it easy to do business with us and our new collaboration with PayCargo and Unisys does just that,” said, Shawn Cole, Vice President, Delta Cargo.

“The extraordinary crisis always leads to extraordinary opportunities,” says Amar More, CEO, Kale Logistics Solutions at CargoTalk’s third digital conclave. Taking about the role of technology in the time crisis, he says, “If we look at the attitude towards digitisation; technology has moved from nice to have thing to necessary evil to now a business driver. The role of technology is increasing in the industry; those who had the right technology could operate in those pandemic days.” “Paper is just not a piece, it means delays, environmental damage and in some places it means corruption and now it is a death threat because COVID-19 stays on paper for three to four days. India is world’s IT backbone and we should be leading the world rather than following the world,” he adds.

Air cargo is a multi decade industry but what we have achieved in last four months is many times of what we have achieved in the last 4-5 decades, says, Saurabh Kumar, CEO, Hyderabad Air Cargo at CargoTalk’s third digital conclave. He says, “Last four months have been a great time for us to think and innovate. If we look at digitalisation, air cargo industry has started talking about new initiatives to reduce paper and to digitalise the processes, four to five years back. However, the process of adoption has been slow. If we compare ourselves with other industries as well, air cargo has been slightly slow in terms of adopting technologies.” “We started thinking about digitisation in last four months when confinement has not left us with any other option,” adds Kumar.

Calling digitisation an enabler and not a revenue generator, Keku Bomi Gazder, CEO, AAICLAS, says, at CargoTalk’s third digital conclave, “It is a value add to our industry which is long due. We are the land of producing digitisation and yet we are not 100 per cent digitised. It seems to be a bit of a challenge to understand why we are not moving into a 100 per cent at least into an e-airway bill mode.” He continues, “We need to think even beyond paperless or digitisation and that is to do with being contactless; which means less interaction in the physical world.” Gazder believes that the pandemic seems is an opportunistic moment for us to look at digitisation seriously.

The third edition of CargoTalk digital conclave will begin today at 10 am till 12:15 pm. There will be two sessions each of one-hour duration, which will lay emphasis on re-engineering the future. Experts from air cargo and road logistics will share their views. Panelists for first session titled ‘Digitalisation: Building and Enabling Confidence’ (10am-11am) will be Saurabh Kumar, CEO, GMR Hyderabad Air Cargo, Amar More, Director, Kale Logistics Solutions and Keku Gazder, CEO, AAICLAS. For the second session, titled ‘The Road ahead – Driving to Success’ (11:15am-12:15pm), there will be Chander Agarwal, Managing Director, TCI Express, Aditya Shah, Executive Director, V-Trans India and Ashok Goyal, Managing Director, BLR Logistiks.

The third edition of CargoTalk digital conclave is all set to be held tomorrow, Tuesday, July 7 with a focus on how digitalisation building and enabling confidence. Speakers will include Saurabh Kumar, CEO, GMR Hyderabad Air Cargo, Amar More, Director, Kale Logistics Solutions, Keku Gazder, CEO, AAICLAS. The session between 10:00 am to 11:00 am will cover subjects such as practices the industry has learnt from COVID-19 experience, technology solutions which are the need of the hour for the industry, etc.

In order to reduce the logistics cost of air carriage, Vandana Aggarwal, Sr Economic Advisor, Ministry of Civil aviation (MoCA), requested Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport, Highways and MSME, at the webinar held by Domestic Air Cargo Agents Association of India (DACAAI), to recommend to bring air turbine fuel (ATF) under the ambit of the goods and services tax (GST). She informs fuel accounts for 40 per cent cost of aircraft operation. Bringing fuel in the GST regime will reduce the logistics cost of air carriage considerably. MoCA has facilitated the cargo operators in addressing the inter-ministerial issues. “MoCA had also operationalised Air Cargo Community System (ACCS) for all stakeholders to get them into paperless mode which will also reduce costs,” she adds.