Plan and operate freighters on viable routes: Mark Sutch

The global air cargo market is under some severe yield pressure at the moment, says Mark Sutch, Chief Commercial Officer – CarGo International, IndiGo. Hence, it is imperative that freighters are planned and operated on routes that are viable and have a good balance of inbound and outbound tonnage, he adds. The challenge as always with freighters is to find the right balance for import/ export and we are seeing some good momentum in this aspect. Naturally, our markets are limited to the performance capability of the A321P2F freighters which have typical narrow body ranges and therefore do not have the ability for US/ Europe CarGo where there is year-round demand. Our Delhi- Istanbul and Mumbai-Istanbul passenger flights have also begun operations with B777s, and we, therefore, have some new widebody capacity that is being sold – not only to IST but beyond to a range of European destinations through our partnership with Turkish, he says. Citing IATA’s latest airline profitability report, he stated that IATA predicted cargo revenues of $142.3bn this year, which is 31.3% down on last year and behind the $149.4bn that was previously expected. In FY23, India’s air cargo traffic volume is estimated to have remained unchanged compared to the previous fiscal year, standing at 3.14 million tonnes.