14 Justin Lancaster


Issue 1 2014 Freight Business Journal


///NEWS Philippines: after the event


The Philippines relief effort aſter November’s typhoon went smoothly – at least as far as any emergency aid operation can be said to do so – says Air Charter Service (ACS). Group commercial director,


said


that lessons learned in previous disasters – particularly the Asian tsunami nine years ago – had stood the aid agencies and transport industry in good stead and many lives had probably been saved by the quick response. One major factor was that the


aid agencies, rather than relying solely on material from Europe or the US, had set up warehouses in strategic locations like Dubai or Kuala Lumpur which shaved hours off the time taken to get aid to where it was needed. As is usual with these


situations, TV footage of the Philippines disaster showed aid piling up at airports and queues of people desperate for food or medicine but the response could not really have been much faster, he argues: “In any emergency, there’s always some criticism of the speed of response, but it does take 3-4 days to get things under control.” Getting large planes into usually small, remote airports that may well themselves have been devastated by the hurricane in 24 hours isn’t realistic, although the military was in fact able to get its aircraſt into Tacloban, the nearest airport to the worst-hit area, very quickly. But to put things into context,


imagine that the Isle of Wight had been devastated by a natural disaster and trying to get jumbo- jet loads of material into Sandown Airport, especially if the port of Southampton has also been partly put out of action. That is the extent of the problems facing aid workers in the Philippines in the first few days aſter the typhoon hit. Air Charter Service in fact


made the first civilian cargo flight into typhoon-ravaged Tacloban on 15 November. It chartered an Antonov 12 aircraſt which carried


just under 10 tons of vital aid from Cebu for the Belgian Foreign Ministry and it later had an An12 operating from Cebu and Davao into Tacloban and Guiuan, easing the backlog of the aid brought in by the larger freighters to these hubs where the warehouses were full. It positioned the aircraſt into the region at its own expense and at one stage had five people based there. And, with air operations


restricted by the limited size of Tacloban – never one of the largest airports anyway – a barge


was in place within nine days and “made a huge difference” he says. Could a highloader have been


flown in more quickly? Probably not, says Richard Smith. “First it was necessary to identify how much stuff was going in, and where.” In the early stages of the relief effort, Manilla was mooted as a possible hub for the aid effort, before it was decided that Cebu would be the most effective location. Once offloaded from the large


freighters at Cebu, material had to be transferred to smaller planes


later stages, says Richard Smith at Air Partner. It is an inescapable fact that flights cost money and if material can be deployed more cost-effectively on scheduled services rather than chartered planes, there will be more cash available for future aid efforts, either in the Philippines or elsewhere. Aid agencies have budgets and limited financial resources, just like any other business. Pierre


van der Stichelle,


director business development cargo at charter broker Chapman


but even commercial mobile phones worked surprisingly well. This wasn’t the case during the Asian tsunami; perhaps the mobile phone infrastructure has improved significantly since then. Another factor that


undoubtedly helped, says Pierre van der Stichelle, is that as the Philippines is quite a disaster- prone region, many aid agencies already had a presence there. There was good cooperation too from the Philippines government – sadly, not always the case in some other disaster-hit countries


invest; where do you expect the next disaster to strike? And even if you did, that airport might be smashed by a hurricane or earthquake.” It might be more important to


ensure that major regional hubs are able to cope with the demands put


on them. One factor that


certainly helped in the Philippines was that Cebu airport had an unusually large ramp considering the number of flights it regularly handles. Readers may recall that the lack of ramp space in Port Au Prince airport was a major reason why it took such an agonisingly long time to get aid through to earthquake victims in Haiti in 2010. Now that two months has


Small freighter aircraſt kept the aid flowing into the disaster region. operation was soon mounted


from Cebu to get large quantities of aid into the typhoon-hit area. Inevitably, there were backlogs


of aid cargo at Cebu, the nearest large airport to the hurricane-hit area, although even this is hardly one of the world’s major air hubs. At one stage there were seven 747 freighters on the ground because of a lack of highloaders. Once the decision to deploy


an extra highloader was made, it was moved to Cebu very quickly, points out Air Partner director of freight, Richard Smith: “When we were asked, we got hold of an An124 very quickly.” The machine


and flown to Tacloban. The small airport there has ramp space for only two planes. Incoming flights had to radio through first to make sure there was space for them. Other factors that helped the


aid effort was that there was plenty of airfreight capacity going into Asia at the time as the Christmas cargo rush out of Asia to Europe and North America was in full swing, with plenty of largely empty aircraſt already en route to the region. In fact, one of the characteristics


of this aid effort was the extent to which it relied on scheduled air capacity, particularly in the


Dnata reveals cargo locations


Middle East-based handler dnata has revealed details of where its new handling facilities at regional UK airports will be located, following the announcement last year of a major expansion plan. They are:


London Gatwick: Unit 5, Gatwick Airport Centre, Cargo Road; Birmingham:Argosy Building, Air Cargo Centre; and Glasgow: Cargo Terminal, Building 7/8, Nevis Way. At London Heathrow, two of


the buildings in the new dnata City development - the 140,000 square foot Cargo Point and 79,000 square foot West Point - currently handle 21 wide-body flights daily for Virgin Atlantic, with a 60,000 square foot facility


Freeborn confirms this: “We


started off with chartered MD11s and 747s for the first 5-6 days. Then we started operating IL76s and An12s on internal flights in the Philippines from Cebu or Manilla to various local airports, an operation that lasted three weeks.” The smaller planes were mostly flown down from Europe to the Phlippines and then stayed there to maintain internal links. Communications also worked


surprisingly well. ACS and other operators use satellite phones, which are largely immune from disruptions to mobile phone and other public networks,


nearby at Bedfont Road dedicated to Cathay Pacific’s passenger and freighter cargo operations. The dnata City complex will also encompass the handler’s existing 60,000 sq ſt self- contained transport yard.


– so carriers and agencies were able to operate with a minimum of red tape. It also helped hugely that Chapman Freeborn’s operations subsidiary Wings24 was able to track the progress of the hurricane and, as soon as it hit, got in touch with local airports to find out what was still working. Modern communications have been a boon in disaster relief. Could infrastructure at key locations in areas


vulnerable


to natural disasters perhaps be improved to cope with future events, we asked Justin Lancaster? “The problem is where do you


passed since the Philippines typhoon, the air charter operators are not involved to anything like the extent that they were. Planning of the shipping or operation to bring post-disaster aid got under way within days of the typhoon and most material is now coming in by sea. Pierre van der Stichelle at Chapman Freeborn says that most of the follow-up freight is now moving either by scheduled flight or by barge. However, the air charter companies are still being kept busy by other events – ACS has been running flights in Bangui to help refugees in the Central African Republic and it has also had a few flights into Juba in South Sudan. The latter is another example of how the limited infrastructure in many parts of the world can hamper emergency relief efforts; there have been plans for some time to upgrade the airport but these were not realised and now that there is a major war and refugee crisis, it is struggling to cope. Even the An124, with its relatively limited runway length requirement, cannot land. Chapman Freeborn was still


working on the Philippines relief when it got the call to put flights in Bangui and South Sudan, an operation that is still ongoing at the time of writing.


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