air cargo and airmail

China has shown spectacular development in its domestic traffic, which increased five-fold in 10 years. This market offers the strongest potential for the future, and in the long term could catch up the American market. On a shorter time scale, the startup and ongoing works on gigantic projects at the beginning of the 21st century (a 2,625-mile gas pipeline from the Tarim Basin to the Port of Shanghai, Three Gorges Dam and the diversion of the waters of the Yangtse towards Beijing etc) are likely to generate enormous quantities of freight charter activities resulting from the inadequacies in the land-based infrastructure.

The Japanese domestic market takes third place in the world rankings, with a gross traffic of 930,000 tonnes in 2000. The spread of the population and of economic activity throughout a chain of islands is a factor which is very favourable to airfreight, in spite of the quality and the intensity of the marine connections between the islands.The principal traffic artery connects Tokyo-Haneda with Sapporo-Chitose on the island of Hokkaido.

Brazil is ranked in fourth place with a domestic traffic of around 350,000 tonnes. The main connection links the economic capital of Sao Paulo with Manaus in the heart of Amazonia.

A tried and tested multi-modal link – the sea-air traffic

A humorous vision, but very expressive of sea-air traffic. From Port Rashid Authority publicity, 1991.

The aircraft is never an isolated means of transport. It is preceded and followed by more or less complex operations for pick-up and onward delivery. It is always part of a chain. Air transport is essentially and necessarily multi-modal. The association of air and road links is widespread and goes back many years. The conjunction of air and rail, which was highly developed between the two world wars and then almost abandoned, seems now to have a new lease of life in spite of its qualitative limitations. The integration between air and sea has also experienced a renewal of interest since the 1960s. This “sea-air” traffic, to take up the expression used by one forwarding agent: “Gives you a 50% reduction on the time by sea with a 50% reduction on the rate for airfreight.” “Sea-air” traffic consists essentially of traffic flows leaving Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and India) for destinations in Europe, South America and Africa. The vast majority consists of textile products, toys and electronic equipment.

Air Canada can claim to have initiated the modern version of “sea-air” traffic when in the 1960s it was looking for a source of supply to fill its capacity in the easterly direction, leaving Vancouver as well as Montreal and Toronto. In 1965 Air Canada launched a “Sea-air Service” specially designed to promote a new product – the combined “sea-air” transport linking by sea the ports of Yokohama and Vancouver, then by road or by air Vancouver to the East coast, and finally by air from Montreal or Toronto to Europe. This product was so successful with the carriage of substantial tonnages of Japanese photographic equipment that the American ports of Seattle, then Los Angeles and San Francisco rushed in to compete with Vancouver. This “historical route” for sea-air traffic, connecting Japan and then Korea with Europe, then entered a period of stagnation, if not decline (the Japanese traffic stood at around 45,000 tonnes), due to competition from new routes via Singapore and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – Dubai and Sharjah.

The competition from Singapore started in 1986. As a very active centre for sea and air transit,this city-state gained a position for itself within the streams of “sea-air traffic” for which it was geographically best placed: towards Europe from Taiwan and towards Australia from the Far East and India.

The main competitor to the North Pacific route for combined transport is now Dubai. Exploiting to a maximum the abundance and quality of its port and airport installations (Port Rashid and Djebel Ali) and its airports, the simplicity of its administrative formalities, the frequency of its sea connections and the rapidity of transit times between ship and aircraft (up to four hours!), Dubai has won a strong position in sea-air traffic coming from the Far East (mainland China and Taiwan) and from the Indian subcontinent (India and Sri Lanka) for destinations in Europe, Africa and the former states of the USSR. Its most redoubtable competitor in this field is none other than the neighbouring airport of Sharjah.

Korean Air launched a new service from China in collaboration with its parent company, the Hanjin Shipping Company, at the end of the 1990s. Named the “Sky-Bridge Service”, “it originates in China-Tianjin,Shanghai,Qingdao, Dalian,Weihai by sea to reach the gateway seaports of Pusan or Inchon in Korea. From there it moves on bonded transport to Seoul-Inchon or Pusan International Airport to be connected to any of our flights to major cities in the world.This multi–modal service opens a new pattern of transportation by combining land, sea and air.”

Although a good sea-air journey does not exceed 15 days between Asia and Europe, the future of this formula is still open to question,since it is squeezed between straightforward shipping by sea (the quality of service of which is improving) and normal air transport (the rates of which are decreasing). This is especially true because, although we are dealing with multi-modal transport, there can be no question of “inter-modal transport” since the marine containers are not transferred onto the aircraft but are opened up so that the goods can be then reloaded onto aircraft pallets. Let us leave the last word to “Cargo Vision”, the excellent publication of KLM Cargo: