Hyderabad airport's cargo satellite building
viewed from the air cargo complex. The facility has been put
up by GMR, the operators of the international airport, and
could be replicated at Delhi.
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While the growth potential
that air cargo holds has prompted stakeholders to start new services
or revamp existing ones in India, infrastructure providers too have
woken up. The GMR Group, which operates Delhi and the Hyderabad international
airports, has decided to set up a warehousing facility near the airport
at Delhi, this year.
GMR has a similar setup in Hyderabad. More
on the lines of a cargo village, the Delhi one – the plans for
which have been drawn up for execution from around September this
year – will be built on more than100,000 sq metres.
What is important is that GMR will not construct
any facility on the land allocated. Instead, it will provide the foundation
for cargo and logistics outfits that are looking to construct facilities.
The airport operators hope that Delhi’s facilities would be
better than those available at Hyderabad. Hyderabad’s international
air cargo complex spans an area of 10 acres.
Of this, three acres have been allocated
for cargo processing and storage. Of the total area of 14,330 sq m,
the international air cargo complex is on 6,610 sq m while the domestic
air cargo complex has 4,346 sq m. Managed by a joint venture between
the GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited and the UK-based Menzies,
the cargo section has a hi-tech facility capable of handling 100,000
tonnes annually.
Like the Hyderabad airport cargo facility,
the Delhi one would, in all probability, be operated with Hermes,
an IT application that is used by a number of major airports around
the world. Once everything is in place, the cargo terminal will be
able to make its warehouse management, from the acceptance of cargo
till it is put into a plane, efficient.
The establishment of such a facility near
the Delhi International airport has been a long-standing demand of
the freight forwarding community. The facility that exists today is
a small one operated by the local chapter of the Air Cargo Agents
Association of India (ACAAI).
The demand for the establishment of a cargo
village has been gaining momentum ever since the Delhi airport was
handed over by the Government-run Airports Authority of India (AAI)
to GMR, the private operators. The manner in which GMR has been running
the Hyderabad airport has earned it laurels and therefore reason enough
for the demand to have become stronger. What has, perhaps pushed the
airport operator to embark on plans to start the warehousing facility
is the recommendation of the Planning Commission.
The Planning Commission is the Government
of India institution that formulates the country’s Five-Year
Plans and is entrusted “to make an assessment of the material,
capital and human resources of the country, including technical personnel,
and investigate the possibilities of augmenting such of these resources
as are found to be deficient in relation to the nation’s requirement,”
which states setting up of dedicated air cargo villages, as is the
norm worldwide. These cargo villages around major airports would have
an integrated cargo infrastructure and would be single window setups
to provide forward and backward linkages.
The integrated logistics report prepared
by the Commission mentioned that land had to be demarcated within
the international airports and “where land is not available
within the airport premises, off-airport air cargo village facilities
can be developed.”
While the airport-based cargo villages could
be managed by the airport operator, the off-airport villages could
be developed by logistics operators.
In addition, the Commission had recommended
that Delhi be developed as an international air cargo hub.
The report mentioned: “Considering relevant factors that affect
an airport’s ability to attract transshipment cargo traffic,
Delhi comes to mind first for development of an international cargo
hub in India.”
Air cargo experts believe that with the new
warehousing facilities, Delhi could position itself as a global cargo
hub. If nothing else, India’s capital has a distinct geographical
advantage: not only is it connected to airports around the country,
it also connects the East with the West. In fact, it is almost at
the centre of the important aviation hubs of Singapore and Dubai airports.
Tirthankar Ghosh
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A jetliner flight from Germany to Hong Kong takes about ten hours. Not
in the case of Leipzig/Halle-based cargo carrier AeroLogic GmbH however,
that deploys B777-200 freighters on that route. The aircraft need an
additional sixty minutes or even more to link both airports nonstop
since they are forced to bypass Russian territory. 
Weber and his co-Managing Director Thomas Papke however, are confident
to be permitted the traffic rights soon. The
soonest this could happen is March 12, when German and Russian government
delegations gather to hold their bi-annual meeting on traffic matters.
“I don’t know any other cargo airline
comparable to us,” says manager Weber. On weekdays from Monday
to Friday the aircraft are exclusively deployed on DHL Express’
global routes, carrying mostly packages and parcels, then Lufthansa
Cargo takes over responsibility on Saturdays and Sundays by utilizing
the Boeing freighters on the carrier’s own network. Constant co-loading
by both partners is assured by a block space agreement that secures
the best achievable payload on basically every flight. 
Air
Cargo News FlyingTypers leads the way again as the world’s first air
cargo publication to connect the industry to the broadly expanding and
interactive base for social commentary—Twitter.
February
16: Woe Is VS. Richard Branson Virgin Atlantic founder
is apoplectic as AA and BA get tentative approval from USA to combine
their Atlantic services.
February
16: Make those diapers to go….Tami is the name
of a girl born on a TAM flight to La Paz recently. Tami (get it?) gets
free flights until she turns 21.
By
the time you read this, Mardi Gras in New Orleans will be over, as Fat
Tuesday morphs into today, the first day of Lent leading directly into
Easter 2010.
