We were thinking about our friend Ernie Croner, who in 1977 was amongst the earliest airport cargo marketing managers. Ernie worked for Massport, operator of Boston Logan International Airport.      No, we did not write “person of color cargo marketing managers” because Ernie was all by himself in a job that subsequently was created by other airports everywhere in the world.      Ernie saw Boston, as an airline destination, getting its brains beaten out by New York City for flights and cargo.      So Ernie came up with a very imaginative marketing campaign for Boston with the help of my mother, the late Eleanor Jane Arend.      Actually by the time the creative went to press and ran for a few months in all the trade newspapers and magazines of the time, the campaign advertisement that a Boston ad agency came up with was a full classic.      The ad included a girl in a T-shirt with a replica of the big apple logo, the symbol of New York City printed on the front with the famous words “I Love New York—”      The advertisement then revealed the back of the T-Shirt with the words: “But I ship Through Boston!”      Ernie handed out those T-Shirts by the thousands at every air cargo gathering, and especially in New York.      We were thinking of Ernie last week when we ran a picture of Smilin' Sam Chui, who hosted the Turkish Airlines webinar Cargo Talks on February 10th.      Only thing was Smilin' Sam was pictured situate behind a massive and quite sumptuous first class meal aboard an Emirates flight.      An Emirates picture of a guy as MC at a Turkish Cargo event?      We thought about that.      In truth, Smilin' Sam is a YouTube celeb and a story in himself for he has flown every airline you have ever heard of in first class and then shared that experience with his YouTube devotees.      So thinking Smilin' Sam as we created coverage for Turkish Cargo last week we could not find a picture of Sam chowing down on a Turkish flight.      But now recalling the experience with our friend, dear Ernie, our picture of Smilin' last week might to be a bit misleading.      “I work for Turkish Cargo but fly on Emirates!”      We think not.      Here with apologies for any unintended consequences is Smilin' Sam in high style with his champagne dinner date, taking it all in, this time aboard a Turkish Airlines flight, up where he belongs.

A Walk On The Lighter Side

     Fun and games as mentioned were part of the mix, so occasionally during the first two and half hours, back came Smilin' Sam doing his MC thing between sessions. The contests and prizes and promos, we supposed, were advanced along the way to keep viewers from sliding off, as it happens in many webinars. Those who stuck it out with the three-hour long broadcast eventually must have thought they might strike it rich in prizes and air travel as the lots of games and goodies were offered.
     The final session touched on COVID-19, a 40-minute presentation by Frank Van Gelder, Secretary General of Pharma Aero, who managed to explain in great detail the work done the past year. He also mentioned an interesting example of a novel logistics approach to vaccines in the Brussel/Montevideo air bridge.      However, the many graphs Frank brought to the screen were complex and because they were squished into an image shared with Frank, some of the graphs were difficult to read. Perhaps Frank could have moved himself out of the presentation slides? On the other hand, one could also buy a bigger screen for the PC. You never know what is right. In any case, Frank has been down this road before and most of the content is covered in one way or another on www.pharma.aero.
     Our thought is that webinars, big and complex like this one, created with so much passion and fine human effort will eventually figure these things out. Let us not forget that we are still, in a way, at the beginning of a new process.

Need To Proceed

     Air cargo as an industry needs to further embrace this remote communication outreach.
     First, we must not be told one more time by some special interest groups amongst us that it is a good idea to have a live meeting anywhere in the world during 2021.
     Common sense says, stay put in 2021 as the COVID-19 continues to be life-threatening. As you read this mid-February the world is still locked down.
     Everyone needs to realize that trade show organizers and organizations that exist for their members and companies on all sides of the business need to cooperate and conduct webinars and other means of contact until science signals the all clear from COVID-19.
     In terms of air cargo future—we need to engage wherever possible toward accelerating on all fronts. Our contact in these webinars needs to be driven toward breakthrough thinking and be challenged to go viral to bring on change.
     As we meet and share thoughts of change as never before, my feeling is that once spoken the mouth feel to advance will be there, so we will shape the building of a future together.
     Right now is the time to pull out all the stops and set our collective imaginations free because this is our nano-second of fame, whilst air cargo occupies a place in the world, and in popular culture, that it never did before. So kudos to panel two for passionately pleading to accelerate the creation of a data sharing environment.

Hammerin' Hank

     Henk Mulder of IATA led the panel with people in tuned to digitization.
     Next panel let’s expand that idea and hear more from those in the field doing the day-to-day work.
     They are the ones that know the best in a lot of cases.
     You need the leaders of companies to direct their company’s thinking into what would work better and making changes more easily with the use of API programming and use of the cloud.
     It is time to get accelerated to see a day when all the technology is truly adopted and integrated.
     It seems that the pandemic has moved the brain cells to get really engaged on how to do things differently.
     Air cargo has come a long way on the journey to improve and it is evolving into its next age of change.

History Is Alive

     These are not flinty DC4 freighters saving the black and white City of Berlin. Every day look up at the mightiest airplanes flying around, building cargo business in the air from a once upon a time trickle to a flood of air commerce.
     Dick Malkin, the original air cargo journalist, envisioned this change in his 1952 book “Boxcars in The Sky”. Well in 2021, the change is real and it is upon us.
     The question is, what are we going to do about it?
Geoffrey