Move over Frankfurt . . . a referendum could cripple Zurich Airport.
     Sunday, November 27 will be a decisive day for Switzerland’s entire aviation industry and the national economy of the Alps state in general.
     It is then that the inhabitants of Canton Zurich are called to the polls to decide on a referendum whether further improvements at the airport should be allowed or strictly prohibited by law. The popular vote became necessary after 42 individual municipalities opted against any enlargement of the existing runway system at Switzerland’s most important gateway, as well as the construction of additional runway capacity. In a complementary initiative, an additional group of aviation skeptics demand that approaches from southern flight paths should be completely forbidden due to noise, since this route leads over many populated areas.
     Meanwhile, a growing number of aviation industry members are taking action to prevent the triumph of Zurich’s opponents in the upcoming plebiscite, which would paralyze any further development. The ‘pro ZRH’ movement is spearheaded by the passenger airline, Swiss, and its air freight division, Swiss WorldCargo.
      In a recently published brochure, the carrier’s top management points out that roughly 180,000 people are working in Switzerland’s aviation industry or at suppliers. They account for an annual value of 30 billion Swiss Francs added to the national economy, with most of the sum being generated by Zurich-related enterprises.      Furthermore, CEO Harry Hohmeister and chairman of the supervisory board, Bruno Gehrig, stress in their paper that, by value, one third of the country’s exports are leaving Switzerland by air.
     Consequently, Swiss, together with other fellow campaigners, opts for a gradual enlargement and modernization of Zurich airport. “We made enormous efforts to reduce noise emissions at this site by continuously modernizing our fleet,” states Swiss WorldCargo’s helm, Oliver Evans.
      Technological improvements, he emphasizes, are a much better way to solve problems and further lowering the noise footprint, than plebiscites, which eventually block the airport and its business partners from any future development. To convince the neighborhood accordingly, Swiss WorldCargo started an awareness campaign, driving an old Volkswagen to the nearby municipalities in order to engage in intense dialogues with the electorates. “We do our utmost to convince people that a blockade of the airport would lead to a multitude of negative implications, not only for us at Swiss or the airport but the entire economy of this country,” warns Oliver Evans.

      Support comes from Moritz Leuenberger, president of the influential Swiss Luftfahrtstiftung (aviation foundation). If the referendum is successful, the competitiveness of the entire country would be at stake, he warns. Especially the Zurich-based cluster of scientific, technological, cultural, and economic institutions, which could not progress any further and would inevitably fall behind. The evening of November 27 will show if these arguments successfully convinced the majority of Canton Zurich’s residents.
Heiner Siegmund

     While the major trade lanes from Asia to Europe and North America may be suffering from overcapacity and lower than expected cargo volumes, not least because both continents are struggling to avoid recession, trade within Asia is still showing strong growth, according to leading figures contacted by Air Cargo News/FlyingTypers.
     “Demand between Asian countries has been stronger than intercontinental demand all year,” said John Cheetham, (right) Regional Commercial Manager for the Asia Pacific region at British Airways World Cargo.      
      “British Airways World Cargo operates freighter services between China, Hong Kong, India and Bangladesh. The demand for these services is good.”
     Jan de Vegt, (left) Area Manager for Asia at Air France-KLM Cargo, confirmed that although growth has slowed marginally, demand was still far stronger than on European and U.S. lanes. “Asia is a little bit more dependent on airfreight as opposed to Europe and the US,” he added. “There are far less possibilities intra-Asia with trucking and trains.”
     While there are concerns about excess capacity being dumped into intra-Asia routes – Cheetham said some carriers were re-allocating capacity out of “depressed” traditional markets, and a spokesman for Cargolux said intra-Asia was currently served by a glut of wide-bodied capacity, which means the economic and trading outlook remains positive. The latest forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for example, predict that Asia will see overall economic growth of 6.2 percent this year, rising to 6.6 percent in 2012. ‘Developing Asia,’ which includes India and China, will grow even faster, at 8.2 percent this year and 8 percent in 2012.
     Andrew Herdman, (right) Director General of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines, said consumer sentiment was still strong in Asia and this was underpinning solid demand for passenger and cargo services. “There’s no getting away from the fact that if you’re in long haul, then your fortunes are intertwined with the U.S. and Europe,” he said. “But Asia is enjoying solid economic growth. We’ll see intra-Asia continuing to grow.”
     How that trade is handled in the future is decidedly unclear at present. Boeing is betting that the incursion of low cost carriers operating narrow-bodied aircraft will not impact the widespread deployment of, and demand for, wide-bodied 747s on intra-Asia routes. Airbus, meanwhile, expects a new market to emerge, one that will see more demand for regional freighters—its new A330-200F, for example, or A320 conversions—alongside LCC narrow-bodied planes, particularly on emerging routes.
     Herdman said that, at present, Asian carriers have a high proportion of wide-bodied planes in their fleets and this was limiting freighters to select lanes. “Often it hasn’t made sense to have regional freighters unless it’s for overnight parcels by integrators,” he said. “But there are now some mid-sized freighters and there are opportunities, for example, using freighters to get cargo into a hub for a long-haul.”
     He also pointed out that some LCCs, most notably Air Asia, are now moving into long-haul markets using wide-bodied planes and it could not be assumed they would necessarily stick with fleets of narrow-bodied planes in the future.
     Robert Timmerman, (left) Area Manager for Greater China at Panalpina, is firmly in the Airbus analytical camp. He predicted “massive” growth of intra-Asia air traffic in the years to come, which would require the deployment of more regional freighters.
     “The trade is the single largest trade lane in the world and provides great opportunities, on the one hand, but also challenges going forward due to the imbalance of the volumes within Asia.”
SkyKing

     The Indian diaspora in Britain and Europe have often had reasons to pine for vegetables and fruits from the mother country, and their desires will now be fulfilled. Come October, one of India’s newest international airports, the Sri Guru Ramdas Ji (SGRJ) International Airport in the holy city of Amritsar in Punjab, will be ready to start perishable operations—for the second time—to Britain and Austria.
     This will be a fresh start for the Perishable Cargo Center at the airport and this time around, freight forwarders and all those connected to the perishable trade are upbeat about the British Midland International (BMI) and Comtel Air flights connecting Amritsar to Britain and Austria. British Midland has on the anvil three flights a week on the London-Almaty-Amritsar route starting from October 13. According to bmi, the A330 that will service the route is presently on lease to Turkish Airlines but will be returned soon. What has encouraged the perishable cargo stakeholders is the fact that the A330 has a 44-ton capacity: enough for consignments of fresh vegetables.
     Comtel Air is also scheduled to start its Birmingham/Stansted-Vienna-Amritsar operation from the first week of October.

      Though exporters of fresh produce— the state of Punjab produces a wide variety of fruits and vegetables—are happy with the introduction of the international flights, they are keeping their fingers crossed and hope that these will not be stopped suddenly, as was the case sometime ago. Air India had a flight on the Amritsar-London-Toronto route that was doing quite well. Both the flights were withdrawn—Air India’s, in fact, two years ago—and exports of perishable goods dropped drastically.
     Following the Air India withdrawal, a number of other carriers like Singapore Airlines and Jet Airways, which had an Amritsar-London flight to service the burgeoning traffic from Punjab to London, stopped operations due to high landing charges. This February, however, Air India started flights on the Amritsar-Toronto route that have become immensely popular with Indians from Canada.
     As for cargo, vegetable exporters are hoping that Punjab’s baby corn, snow and green peas, mangoes, guavas and kinnows, which are popular and cheaper in comparison to those sent from Africa or South East Asia, will take up more belly space. What has also encouraged the exporters is the initiative of the government-controlled Airports Authority of India (AAI) that manages the airport to boost perishable exports. The AAI has established a separate perishable center for export of perishable cargo. Operated by the government-run Council for Value Added Horticulture of Punjab (CVAHP), the center includes pre-cooler chambers, X-ray machines for scanning of perishable cargo and cooled rooms. The capacity import and export capacity of perishable goods from the center is 80 metric tons per day.
     However, it is not only perishable cargo that the region exports. In one of India’s highly industrialized zones, comprising the cities of Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Ambala and Baddi, there are thousands of small scale units producing machine and auto parts for BMWs and Mercedes, household appliances, hosiery, woolen garments and pharma products. The air cargo complex is capable of handling Bonded Cargo Trucking, X-ray screening and certification and express cargo.
     Meanwhile, a recent trend augurs well for the air cargo trade. A number of private-held equity firms have shown their interest in investing in logistics companies. According to KPMG, the government according infrastructure status—and therefore low taxes—to storage, transport and mega-food parks prompted the trend. As such, a number of logistics majors have been foraying into cold chain.
Tirthankar Ghosh

Marina Marzani

     So far, 384 airports, 33 airlines and 1,658 freight forwarders are taking part in IATA’s e-freight initiative. With Duesseldorf-headquartered Globaltrans GmbH joining in, the number of agents grows by one.
     “E-freight has a very high priority for our company,” says Kay Uwe Gretsch, (left) Director of Globaltrans. The manager refers to numerous advantages resulting from paperless processes in shipping air freight. Besides time and cost savings, the shipment reliability improves and thus the transport quality. In addition, Gretsch stresses reduced environmental impacts that result from paperless cargo processes.
     According to IATA, up to eighty B747 freighters would become obsolete every year if shipment data were transmitted electronically among all members of the supply chain.
     Now Gretsch’s Globaltrans got the ‘go ahead’ for e-freight from both Lufthansa Cargo and Air Canada.      It’s a much-needed step since only five percent of all air freight shipments in Germany are submitted paperless. IATA hopes to double this percentage by year’s end.
     According to Karl Ulrich Garnadt, Lufthansa Cargo CEO, e-freight is ranked very high on his carrier’s strategic list of priorities. Before accepting electronic data messages sent by forwarders, and prior to giving their “green light,” both LH Cargo and Air Canada check the quality of these transmissions and processes.      According to Lufthansa Cargo, first tests of the messages sent by Globaltrans showed satisfactory results.
“The data quality the freight agent delivered to us with Scope was impressive. So we were able to switch over quickly to real paperless shipping,” stated J. Florian Pfaff, (right) LH Cargo’s VP Area Management, Germany. The electronic communication manager ‘Scope’ was developed by Riege Software International and provides cargo airlines, handling agents, custom authorities and forwarders a pioneering tool that caters to their needs.      States Pfaff: “My colleagues were very impressed by Scope. The Riege-system is extremely user-friendly and offers smart functions.” Praise that Managing Director Johannes Riege feels quite pleased with, pointing out Globaltrans’ key role as partner in the development process of the EDI system.
     “Over a number of years, we mutually built up the required know-how for ‘Scope’ by working together and fine tuning processes,” Riege states.
     Now after having started sending paperless shipments on board of Lufthansa Cargo and Air Canada, Kay Uwe Gretsch reminds cargo carriers to speed up e-freight processes by complying with guidelines set by IATA. Emphasizes the manager: “My aim was originally to deploy half of our air freight shipments to paperless by the end of this year. But unfortunately, most of the airlines are not yet ready.”
Heiner Siegmund/Flossie

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