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Issue 6 2013


///ALL CARGO AIRLINES


To put it mildly, these are challenging times for operators of freighter aircraſt. With the market on the floor, airlines are laying up their fleets, either in whole or in part. In a few years’ time, all-cargo aircraſt might well have become an endangered species as far as scheduled combination carriers are concerned.


Stansted defies the gloom


The freighter market may be all doom and gloom, but Stansted Airport’s own all-cargo is actually doing very well, says Mark Souter, business development manager at parent company, MAG. Tonnage on full freighters is up 5-6% on a rolling 12-month basis, he says. The London gateway handles


more of the new 747-8 freighters than any other UK airport and the airport has benefited from traffic that has been pushed out of the Capital’s other two main airports, Heathrow and Gatwick. To illustrate the point, Souter


points out that whereas Heathrow is operating at near 100% of its runway capacity and Gatwick at over 80% in the summer, the corresponding figure for Stansted is just 51%. Little wonder, then, that Stansted figures heavily in the Davies Commission’s considerations for airport capacity in the south-east, although local residents can rest assured that there is certainly no urgent need for new runways just yet. There is room, physically and under the agreement with the local councils, to add another 130,000 flights a year. The airport nestles in the rolling


Essex countryside surprisingly unobtrusively. Sitting in a country pub just a mile from the terminal, you are much less conscious of the major gateway down the road than you would be in Heathrow or even Gatwick. The airport also had the


foresight to invest in facilities to handle the 747-8, and, for that matter, the new A380 passenger plane. The 747-8 is longer than the


older jumbos, so around £2m was spent on realigning parking stands and reposition underground pipes and cables. It could be money well spent if,


as many predict, the older versions of the 747 freighter are withdrawn


in large numbers in favour of the 747-8 which offers not only much better fuel economy, but a remarkably low noise footprint for such a large plane – no more than a 737, Souter considers. This allows the plane to fly at night when other,


noisier types would be grounded. “We also have an excellent cargo


centre so we can move cargo very quickly – straight through the shed to waiting trucks. And it also helps that, not only are we close to London, but the right side of the city too to reach the Midlands.” The airport is also in the middle of what could be termed the UK’s biotech corridor between London and Cambridge. These features have attracted


a good mix of full-freighter operators, including the integrators – FedEx, UPS and TNT – plus the Atlasair freighter operated on behalf of Panalpina and regular fruit and veg traffic from South America on Martinair, BA’s leased freighters, along with regular Royal Mail flights. Ruslan An124s also appear quite regularly.


Heavyweights go toe to toe


Freighters fly into stormy skies


British Airways bit the bullet many years ago and pulled out of operating its own freighters, instead chartering in a small fleet of aircraſt to fill the gaps leſt by its


regular passenger services


– though by all accounts those gaps have lately become few and far between and the planes have spent increasing amounts of time on the ground or working in the general charter market. JAL and, most recently Aeroflot are among the major carriers that have announced that they are giving up freighters. Pure-play freighter operators have also been laying up some of their fleets. The


freighter market has


been squeezed from several directions. Obviously, demand has been hit by recession, which has reduced the size of the global freight market. Global economic recovery may eventually come to the rescue, but in the meantime the introduction of passenger planes


with large bellyhold


The largest full-freighter operated under British Airways colours, the 747-8F came together with its biggest passenger plane, the A380 at Stansted recently. The recently-delivered A380 is making induction


flights over the summer before entering service later this year. BA parent company IAG has purchased a


version with two additional ULD positions in the hold of the aircraſt. IAG Cargo’s Boeing 747-8F aircraſt operate from


London Stansted, providing both scheduled and services. It offers 16% more volume and 18 tonnes additional liſt compared to the 747-400F which it replaced in 2010.


capacity such as the 777 and 787 Dreamliner has nibbled away at the market. True, Airbus’s giant new A380, which despite its huge size actually has a quite limited freight capacity, has started a move in the opposite direction, but at the moment that is only a few planes operating on a handful of long-haul routes. Supply chain IT systems have


also improved to such an extent that shippers can put high-value freight into sea containers and know with a reasonable degree of confidence when they will arrive – which for some has taken away the rationale for using airfreight, which was as much about reliability as speed. High fuel costs must also be


added into the mix. True, new types of freighter, notably the 747- 8, offer much lower per-tonne fuel burn than their predecessors, but the airfreight industry has paid dearly to purchase them, so the savings are largely if not wholly outweighed by increased capital costs. But there will always be a


market for freighter aircraſt. Bellyhold capacity isn’t suitable for all types of cargo and there will still be the surges of demand that scheduled operations cannot cater for. Plus there is still an important niche for specialist aircraſt like the IL76 or the An124 capable of carrying huge


indivisible loads. The


express carriers, too, will remain important users of all cargo capacity. So while the market is set for a


few hiccups before it settles down again, level flight will probably be restored; it’s just a question of whether it will take a couple of years, or several.


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