I Miss Jacques Ancher

Reporters Notebook:
     At TIACA Amsterdam late night conversations turned to people we have known over the years in the air cargo business.
     Make no mistake about it: despite changes felt in almost every quarter of the air cargo experience, this industry is still all about people.
     There have been a few people who have touched almost every facet of air cargo, even impacting people in companies other than their own.
     As we sat thinking about these things in Amsterdam, somebody started talking about mentors in the air cargo industry.
     Then somebody mentioned Jacques Ancher.
     I miss Jacques Ancher.
     Jacques served a lifetime (38 years) in transportation and at the point he retired in 1999, was Executive Vice-President Cargo at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
     Jacques Ancher was a visionary of the air cargo business.
     In fact, Jacques saw way beyond the horizon when it came to anything connected to transportation.
     He viewed air cargo and the entire logistics exercise in clear and precise terms while others noticed little more than a blur in the rearview mirror.
     During his time, KLM operated a fleet of cargo-friendly combi aircraft across its vast international route system, offering main-deck capabilities almost everywhere the airline flew.
     The airline also formed a holding company and acquired the most advanced air cargo facilities while it moved to secure European road feeder companies.
     KLM brought on ACMI lift as an originator of that form of transportation as it positioned itself as the undisputed leader in several segments of air cargo, including live animal and perishables transport.
     The driving influence for much of this was Jacques Ancher.
     To be sure, KLM has always been a cargo savvy airline.
     In fact, the current and immediate past chief executives of the carrier were both top cargo men at the airline before landing behind the CEO’s desk.

     Jacques Ancher brought focus, vision and excitement to his airline and air cargo as well, saying this in 1998:
     “Essentially, each airline has a different level of strategic importance regarding cargo; it is finding the common ground when negotiating an alliance that takes time as each of the partners have their own agenda.
     “The future of air cargo is finding the right strategic partners; the exclusivity of the partnership deal will be negotiable based on competitive pressures and conflict of interest.
     “Exclusive alliances will probably dissolve during the next few years while the carrier looks to fill gaps in its service network and more fluid arrangements are established.”
     We remember Jacques as an amazingly well rounded individual.
     He enjoyed air cargo, thought of this business as the art that it is, and celebrated KLM Cargo with a passion that eludes most executives.
     He also gave the reporter the best of all possible worlds.
     Jacques was an engaged and engaging personality, who was always good copy.
     He could sit for hours with a room full of reporters in sessions of the world air cargo media at KLM Cargo headquarters.
     In an era of quickie statements and sound bites, when was the last time that happened anywhere?
     It really didn’t matter if the gatherings were about a product launch or facility dedication, issues came out on the table and were confronted.
     More often than not, what began as a media event turned into a roundtable work session, a kind of “fetch-up some deep thoughts and talk about them” encounter with the press.
     Jacques would place his wristwatch alongside his note pad at these gatherings because when the talk got going great, time became a non-issue to Jacques.
     But today, any trade show forum session would do well to get a discussion going that even remotely matches the dynamics of reality and substance that those KLM media sessions were during the early 1990’s.
     Jacques also enjoyed life, friends, good food and wine.
     Often, when it came to entertaining, Jacques Ancher would pull out all the stops.
     Once, after an all-day press session at cargo headquarters in Amsterdam, Jacques hosted a dinner for about 100 members of the media and others. He hosted it at Huis Von Loon, a classic Dutch double-sized canal house, which once belonged to one of Rembrandt’s pupils and today is restored to its former elegance and is located in the old part of Amsterdam on a narrow street and waterway called the Keizersgracht.
     Dinner at small candle-lit tables was intimate, excellently prepared and served with gaiety, élan, much laughter and good conversation, followed by a scripted, light-hearted presentation that included Jacques and members of the KLM Cargo team.
     They just don’t do those kinds of things around air cargo very much anymore.
     My favorite Jacques Ancher encounter occurred in 1995 while visiting KLM Cargo headquarters at Schiphol Airport.
     I was in the VIP lav washing my hands, and noticed Jacques standing next to me, doing the same thing.
     For no particular reason, I began talking about my desire to create an air cargo book series and how I had imagined that KLM, with such a rich culture for cargo, would be an ideal start.
     We talked in that small lavatory for 45 minutes; without interruption, we felt lost in time, and only exited after we had shook hands, having decided to do the book.
     Outside, a half dozen KLM’ers at HQ were wondering whether they should break the door down.
     I still remember the looks on those faces as the top boss at KLM Cargo and the writer emerged from the executive toilet after three quarters of an hour.
     But that was Jacques.
     No matter what else was going on, his thought process was completely focused on what was at hand.
     Like a great athlete, his concentration was total.
     For my brief encounter, I discovered that working for him was a real treat.
     I researched the pictures, designed the book and wrote the copy from a base inside the legendary, granite, art nouveau 1902 American Hotel, located near Leidse Square in Amsterdam.
     The place was a constant charge to the creative juices.
     I worked all day in my room overlooking the canal and drank all night in the hotel pub – The Nightwatch Bar – talking to the locals while imagining Hemingway barreling through a side door, slugging down a frosty tall Heineken, and disappearing into the night.
     Late one Friday afternoon, while awaiting a plane back to New York City, I was sitting in what I thought was an empty office up at KLM Cargo HQ, looking over some design sheets for the book (True Blue—The History of KLM Cargo, 1996) when a soft, familiar voice outside called out a name.
     It was Jacques looking for somebody.
     I bid him come inside the room and entreated his patience to show him some of the stuff in the book, looking and hoping for approval.
     I read him the last page of the book, which contained a picture of a small statue Jacques had commissioned for the reception room downstairs by the elevator.
     After describing the page and caption, he said nothing.
     Finally unable to stand it, I asked him what he thought of the work and the last photo and caption, saying something like:
     “You can suggest something else.”
     He looked at me and said:
     “I wouldn’t change anything.
     “Your work is unique.
     “You are an artist.”
     I cannot describe the feeling at that moment except to say that my desire to do books about the business I love was touched four square and has been fueled ever since.
     People that understand the human condition and attempt to balance the big time business thing are rare; there are a few who can do it.
     Imagine an air cargo facility, among the most advanced in the world, which also contains art commissioned by the airline or company, affording artists a palette to create original works that are presented in places of pride inside working areas and waiting rooms?
     Jacques Ancher left something else to air cargo.
     The last time we were there, the air cargo facility located in the City of Amsterdam, home of Rembrandt and Van Gogh, still supported and displayed original works created by unknown aspiring artists commissioned by KLM from destinations the airline serves around the world.
     Jacques also saw to it that KLM created the first leading edge, avant-garde publication for air cargo when KLM Cargovision, a magazine house organ, was completely reformed during the mid-1990s into a monthly work of art itself.
     Many thought when Jacques Ancher retired, he was too young to have left, and that he would probably pop up somewhere later.
     But apparently, Jacques Ancher really wanted to study grandchildren and savor the wine of a life well lived.
He has repeatedly turned down interviews and “where is he now?” type stories, preferring to stay at home or out on the beach enjoying his family and life.
     There is tremendous hope in the proposition that there are among us well-ordered lives that continue after air cargo.
     Still, I miss Jacques Ancher.
     He was not just another suit in the executive tier, but rather a great leader, thinker and patron of life to the air cargo business.
     To air cargo, Jacques Ancher was and is the Dutch Master.
     He also makes me feel glad that I lived long enough to tell you this story.
Geoffrey Arend

Postscript: After completion of “True Blue” in late 1995 (first copies were published in 1996), I mostly forgot all about it except to wonder if Jacques liked the work at completion, as much as he indicated he had while the work was in progress.
     After Jacques retired, somebody in mid-year 2000 from Delta Shuttle (which operates downstairs from our offices at Marine Air Terminal-LaGuardia) knocked on the door of our office with a four year-old DHL package from Netherlands with apologies that the parcel had been put next to, and apparently fallen behind, a filing cabinet, not to be discovered until some renovations on the office took place.
     Inside the package was the best response possible to our KLM Cargo book: a framed special recognition of thanks from the great airline itself, signed by Jacques Ancher.
Edited by Flossie Arend

     As I returned from a rather encouraging Air Cargo Forum 2010, in which something like the worldwide air cargo web I talked about in a recent blog (30th September) started to emerge, my thoughts kept on being pulled back to the much more troubling territory of security, for it is an issue central not only to our industry, but to all our lives.
     A few innocuous looking parcels, later identified as bombs and luckily destroyed before they could do any damage, had the rather positive side-effect of reminding everybody of the importance of three aspects of intelligence:
     The first might reasonably be called our Professional Intelligence: the application of all the formidable array of knowledge, experience and technology within our own industry with the goal to learn from any incident, track down any perceived weakness in our layers of defense, and tighten all existing procedures across our globe.
     The second is what I call our Social Intelligence: the recognition that no single airline, group or even government can or should try to tackle such a complex, well, minefield on its own. This insight has already led to the announcement recently of a Letter of Intent to create an Industry Action Group facilitated by TIACA but comprising all the combined strength of IATA, FIATA and the Global Shipper Forum, which is very heartening and appropriate indeed, for it will create a common front to bring the concerns and needs of the industry to the attention of all governments engaged in the war on terror. Along the way this will ensure a level playing field for all suppliers in the industry, whether passenger airlines or freighter operators, leaving shippers free to choose their supply chain on the basis of commercial considerations only.
     Last, but certainly not least, there is Secret Intelligence: the intelligence we all know from spy novels rather than personal experience. It is these men and women, operating from offices around the globe or amongst the very groups attempting to kill on behalf of their misguided beliefs, who are the real heroes of this latest incident. They became aware of the danger, insisted upon verification of specific parcels even after these had passed our screening tests, and enabled us to learn from the incident instead of suffering from it.      We do not know them, because if we did, so could these desperate bands of terrorists. But it is to them that I, as well as the industry and the public, should be shouting: THANK YOU!
     If we continuously get better at putting these three kinds of intelligence together, I feel we stand a good chance of staying that one crucial step ahead of any malevolent force out there.
Oliver Evans
Chief Cargo Officer
Swiss International Airlines

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