Pictured at the recent Transport Logistic Fair, the AA Cargo Team, from left to right, Roger Samways, Vice President Cargo Sales; Rick Elieson, President Cargo; and Tristan Koch, Managing Director Cargo Sales EMEA ISC.

 For Those Who Serve . . . AA Cargo says that it is extending its domestic military discount program for personal pets to include all international origins and destinations.
    “We’re incredibly grateful for the sacrifices our military personnel and their family members make,” Rick Elieson, AA Cargo President said.
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Medium Cool . . . United Cargo Global TempControl Network now serves Chengdu (CTU) joining China stations PEK, HKG & PVG, previously certified.
   CTU is the 68th global destination that UA has flagged to handle a specialized menu of services for pharmaceuticals, healthcare etc.
   United wide bodies now serve CTU via hub SFO four times weekly.
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  FIATA World Congress Signup . . . Tiny Airspeed Consul of Malayan Airlines parked in a Singapore hangar recalls a time when the six passenger aircraft was the backbone of the air transport service in and out of the Malayan Peninsula.
2017, the rebounding and robust transport industry will host the mightiest airfreight forwarder event in the world, The FIATA World Congress on October 4-8 at the massive Convention Center in Kuala Lumpur.
   As FIATA celebrates its 91st year since its inception in Vienna during 1926, conferees will share a rich and vibrant program of sessions and networking as the 2017 Congress explores: “Logistics Bridging Global Trade.”
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Trip To Paradise Award . . . Sometimes the best award is some time well spent with your customers.
   That is exactly what Turkish Cargo Manila did recently with top business partners via MNL.
   “We organized a FAM trip and our cargo team and key customers spent some quality time on Palavan,” reports MNL Station Manager Erhan Balaban.

   Palavan (pictured) is breathtaking and was described recently as “the most beautiful island in the world.”

  Giving Hope . . . Atlanta Air Cargo Association (AACA) having just concluded a “successful, well-attended Annual Golf Outing,” according to AACA President Hope Chavez ( Atlanta Customs Brokers) now readies itself for “Presidents Day” at next AACA meeting held June 20th 12 to 2PM.
   “During this luncheon we like to take time to honor our Past Presidents, as well as award Scholarships,” Hope said.
   Worth noting, events such as the Golf Outing raises funds for all kinds of programs that AACA supports.
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      If you want to know exactly when the defining time occurred for air cargo in the 20th century, and what led to its development, just cast a line back seventy two years ago and you will discover that modern air cargo was born in India and China.
     Today, as air cargo’s future is increasingly connected to these two ancient countries, it can be said that what is old is new again.

     Early in World War II, President Roosevelt asked Army Air Force General Hap Arnold to devise a method for supplying Chinese and American troops and aviators fighting against the Japanese in China.
Americans were aiding the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai Shek, while American aviators operating P40B fighter aircraft supplied by the USA were part of an all-volunteer group known as the AVG, under the command of Claire Chennault.
     Later, the world would come to know this pilot group as the legendary Flying Tigers.
     As the enemy closed in, military planners decided that an air route across some of the most rugged territory in the world—the Himalayan Mountains—would be sustainable in any event.
     The route quickly earned a name that has immortalized the effort and heroism of that first great air cargo movement, which kept freedom and hope alive for millions during the darkest days of the conflict: for succeeding generations, “The China-India-Burma Hump (CBI)” described a journey which created an aerial lifeline from the Assam Valley in India to Kunming, China.
     China-India-Burma Hump operations took off after the Japanese closed down the overland truck route, called The Burma Road, as Rangoon and the country fell in early 1942.
     To look at it today, that vaunted and somewhat mysterious Burma Road is/was little more than a mostly unimproved artery hacked out in serpentine form in the rugged mountains.
     But as breathtaking as the sheer cliffs were to passengers and drivers inching along the Burma Road, that experience was nothing compared to the adventure of take-off and landing first-generation, all-cargo aircraft operating back and forth between India and China.
     The Himalayas are rugged mountains, some as high as 14,000 feet, which lay square between the Assam Valley and Kunming.
     Since the Japanese controlled everything else, there was no right or left about it either.
     The only way between the two cities was the relatively short 500-air mile, truly hellish flight up over the mountains.
     Although today, aircraft routinely fly over the Himalayan Mountains, as World War II raged, the otherwise picturesque, snow-capped, remote peaks were a daunting challenge to airmen and their twin-engine aircraft.
     Flights from Assam to Kunming often took several hours.
     Unpredictable weather and wind currents were a constant challenge, extending the journey for additional hours as aerial charts were drawn and redrawn to direct flights around fierce storms.
     Bodies were often stressed to the limit; as engines beat ominously against an unforgiving sky, aircraft would encounter up and down drafts, falling and rising thousands of feet in almost an instant.
     Without warning, an airplane would be flipped over by wind currents or whipped side to side.
     The run quickly gained the ominous moniker, “aluminum alley.”
     During the three plus years of Hump operations, more than 167,285 trips were completed, delivering 760,000 tons of air cargo.
     But the price was paid with 792 lives lost aboard 460 aircraft and 701 major accidents.

     Incredibly, seventy-two years later, remains of Hump pilots and their downed aircraft are still being recovered.
     In the summer of 2002, an expedition scaled an 18,000-foot peak, bringing back fragments and other remains of an air cargo flight from 1944 that went missing and was never heard from again, until someone spotted it from the air in 1999.
     Not enough can be said of the heroism and sacrifice that was made by the early military air cargo pilots. They were a select and intrepid breed with lion-sized courage and determination.

     Everyone connected in any fashion to aviation, and especially air cargo, owes the Hump pilots who founded our great industry a debt of gratitude that we should never forget.

1978—Ansel E. Talbert, editor emeritus, Air Cargo News, Salim Salaam, chairman and chief executive officer, Middle East Airlines and Geoffrey Arend, publisher Air Cargo News/FlyingTypers.