TODAY:

     No one realized, back in the late 1940s when the Port Authority entered into lease agreements for the three airports Idlewild (now JFK), LaGuardia and Newark, that air cargo would become a major component of the aviation industry. Nor did anyone have a clue that these three airports would be pioneers in the aviation cargo industry and one-day account for nearly 25% of the nations international air cargo activity.
     Within a week of the opening of JFK in June 1948 the world was rocked by the sudden blockade of the Allied sector of Berlin by the Soviets. The German city was stranded with no possibility of relief from the ground. The subsequent airlift that was conducted kept the entire city alive for almost a full year. When it ended in May 1949 the Berlin Airlift had moved over 500,000 tons of food and 1,500,000 tons of coal into the beleaguered city proving without a doubt that the large scale movement of cargo by air was possible. This event, more than any other, set the direction for the future of air cargo internationally, and in particular, in this region.
     In the early days cargo was handled crudely, shipments were loaded piece by piece into an aircraft, manually handled through the plane to a stowage point, then tied down to the floor using a series of canvas straps and nets.
     Change was necessary in order for the fledgling industry to advance and prosper. That change came in the form of many innovations, which were intrinsically linked with the development of JFK as a premier cargo airport.
     The most significant of these innovations was containerization. This new method of handling air cargo was introduced to the industry in the 1960s and with it came the ability to prepare shipments for transport prior to the aircraft arriving. This helped propel air cargo from its infancy to maturity almost overnight. Air cargo traveling in containers was protected from damage, pilferage, loss and many other factors that could not be prevented when cargo was “loose loaded”. Furthermore, containers allowed for better space utilization aboard aircraft, thereby allowing more weight and more efficient use of fuel. Coupled with the introduction of the faster, larger and more reliable jet aircraft, the industry was off and running.

Jack Boisen vice president cargo Continental Airlines, (left) and Larry Kellner President of Continental Airlines both better than six feet four inches tall, flank regular-sized Port Authority Director of Aviation, William De Cota, as CO launched its great new JFK International Airport Cargo handling facility May 23rd

     Growth brought new challenges to airport operators. Cargo could no longer be handled satisfactorily in outdated warehouses designed more for trucking operations than for air operations. The time had come to construct new and appropriate air cargo facilities. Airport operators partnered with the air cargo industry in stimulating the development of a new generation of cargo facilities built to efficiently handle, not only the operations of the day, but the air cargo operations of the future.
     At JFK, during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, older multi tenant cargo warehouses gave way to the more modern single occupancy terminals.
     Lufthansa, SAS, Japan Airlines, Seaboard World Airlines and the Flying Tiger Line all developed modern, state of the art facilities capable of handling the new aircraft and the new containers. Freighter fleets had now grown to include the Boeing 747 with its unique nose door loading system and the 20 foot container complete with ISO fittings which were adapted from its seagoing cousins. One carrier boasted a container handling system that could deliver containers from the aircraft to a waiting truck in just seven minutes! These revolutionary changes, coupled with location made JFK the air cargo center of the Eastern Seaboard and, in fact made it the one single, most mechanized airport in North America for air cargo, a distinction carried through to today.
     After a decade of unsurpassed development from the early 1970s through to the1980s the air cargo industry literally took a break. However, beginning in 1992 the pile drivers again went into high gear and 1.3 million sq ft of new warehouse space was added to the airport—beginning with China Airlines Cargo completed in 1992 all the way up to Continental Airlines Cargo completed in the spring of 2002. While JFK carved its niche as the premier air cargo gateway, the industry continued to change. The role of the integrators, following the express package concept spearheaded by Federal Express, grew. Single companies began to control the entire logistical distribution process from air transport to sorting to ground delivery.
     Newark International Airport, with its well developed local roadway network, added 1.3 million square feet of new warehouse space between 1985 and 2002, becoming the home of both FedEx and UPS’s highly specialized facilities.
     In the past “innovation” was generally associated with changes in the technology and mechanical systems that support our industry. Today, although clearly these types of innovations are and will be important to the growth of air cargo in this region, we must also be innovative in all aspects of how we approach the critical issues facing our airports. One can safely speculate that the industry, as it evolves, will find newer and more efficient means to mechanically move air cargo seamlessly through our facilities. We will see advances and breakthroughs in bar coding and GPS technology for use with container seals that will provide not only complete and concise information on shipments, but will be capable of pinpointing the exact location of air cargo containers anywhere in the world. The world of cargo will become “virtual” linked by communication and expedited by automation. Dwell times will be all but eliminated and less cargo space will be required to handle greater volumes of cargo.
     To preserve the speed and timeliness, airports together with the Transportation Security Administration will integrate the rules of the “new normal” for security into the business processes we know today, building standards into our systems, not forcing the standards upon existing systems.
     As stakeholders in this business we need to be innovative at our approach to joining together to seek common goals and achieve solutions for nagging problems like airport access that can potentially stunt our growth. As an industry, we need to continue to leverage the use of available technologies and position ourselves to compete for markets that we once monopolized purely due to our geographical and population resources.
     Clearly, in the past 55 years, the air cargo industry has come a long way from loading sacks of coal onto a DC-3. The possibilities for anytime, anywhere freight delivery are only limited by our imagination and ingenuity as the limits of technology are farther unconstrained.