INDUSTRY FOCUSHUMANITARIAN LOGISTICS
Emergency response
Ian Putzger considers the role of the charter broker and freight forwarder in providing humanitarian aid to disaster and conflict zones.
emergency planning division was on standby to support clients needing to move people, freight and aid in or out of the country. For charter brokers, disaster relief work
A
starts before the first calls for aid come in; at some it gets going even before a calamity happens. Staff in Chapman Freeborn’s Rescue, Evacuation and Air Charter Team (REACT) check geological websites for earthquake activity, track probable paths of hurricanes and call locations in their path to find out whether there are problems. “We prepare before agencies call,” said
Pierre van der Stichele, group cargo operations director. The large aid organisations that lead the
charge when international relief efforts are requested have well-established mechanisms for the tender process to move their traffic. The United Nations uses an online process
fter a severe earthquake hit the south island of New Zealand in November 2016, UK headquartered air charter broker Air Partner gave notice that its
for logistics providers wanting to become registered vendors that distinguishes between three tiers of qualification. According to one logistics provider, it took three months to attain the top level classification. (Vendors are not at liberty to disclose their work for the UN and a number of other relief organisations, so nobody can go on the record about this.)
Ethical testing This scrutiny extends to the carriers. “All airlines we use have to be ethically tested,” said Mike Hill, director, group freight, at Air Partner. “We do not tend to use many small local operators.” For the most part, the broker deals with the haul of relief materials to the afflicted area, where relief organisations and their logistics partners take over. Several factors limit the choice of airlines
and aircraft that can be deployed for disaster relief. In the event of an earthquake, much of the infrastructure at the local airport may not function any more, or equipment may not have been there in the first place. In
some cases Air Partner had to fly in high loaders to unload freighter aircraft. Until such equipment is in place, only ramp loading freighters like the Ilyushin IL76 or the Antonov AN 124 are viable. Hence an assessment of the airport
infrastructure – capacity as well as damage to runway, control tower and other installations, availability of fuel and power, and operating phone lines – is one of the first priorities. Often the afflicted areas are in remote
locations with small airports. “These places get congested pretty quickly. They have to cope in a couple of weeks with traffic that they normally get in a year,” remarked Hill. Much of the aid for Nepal in the wake of
the 2015 earthquake was flown to Delhi and shuttled from there to Kathmandu. “Usually you go to a staging port in the area, a fully working airport and port,” said Ben Cunnington, UK development manager, humanitarian relief logistics at Gefco Forwarding, adding that the repair of damaged ports and airports is usually a major priority. Operators are in agreement that the relief
effort to Kathmandu was particularly challenging. The combination of high altitude, a relatively short runway and the surrounding mountains put limitations on aircraft and flight crews that could be deployed, and the airport’s available landing and parking slots were soon overwhelmed. Moreover, the runway had sustained some
Air Partner said that all carriers used for humanitarian operations must meet stringent criteria with regard to ethical testing.
84 January/February 2017
www.heavyliftpfi.com
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