The Air Cargo Industry & its speciality – a personal experience III

The Air Cargo Industry & its speciality – a personal experience III 

Archie D’Souza

People at large and very often air cargo users and service providers do not have the slightest clue about how cargo is carried in an aircraft.  An incident comes to my mind when I was in the airline industry.  I was loading cargo on a pallet when an agent’s representative walked up to me and remarked, “I’ve cleared my consignment before this one was, why aren’t you loading my cargo first?”  I told him, “I’m loading this cargo for a flight to Frankfurt leaving in a couple of hours.  Your cargo is destined to Singapore and that flight is only tomorrow.”  Yes an IATA agency employee not knowing that Frankfurt and Singapore are in different directions.  It reminded me of a little quote from James Michener – “The more I work in the social-studies field the more convinced I become that Geography is the foundation of all. When I call it the queenly science, I do not visualize a bright-eyed young woman recently a princess but rather an elderly, somewhat beat-up dowager, knowing in the way of power.”   

There was another occasion when something similar happened.  Only this time the two consignments, albeit for different destinations, were booked on the same flight.  I was building a pallet for New York on a BOM-LON-NYC flight and the agent whose cargo was destined to London protested that he’d cleared his cargo first but I was loading the New York cargo before his.  How dare I commit such a sacrilege?

Airline staff too are no exception.  I was once taking a flight to Bangkok.  At the airport I asked the representative of the concerned airline the aircraft being use for the flight.  The answer I got was “Airbus 737.”

I started my career in Mumbai and later moved to Bangalore when it had no international flights and a tiny customs cargo warehouse.  All international cargo, incoming and outgoing, used to be carried on Indian Airlines flights from or to Mumbai or Chennai (Bombay & Madras then).  Often, agents, without checking with the issuing carrier, would cut an air waybill and cargo would be handed over direct to Indian Airlines without prior booking.  The results were often disastrous.  I set up a system to remedy that where cargo couldn’t be customs cleared in Bangalore unless space was confirmed out of Mumbai or Chennai.  This system continued till Bangalore became an international airport.

Air India started operating a freighter flight from Mumbai to Bangalore & back in 1989.  This was with an IL 76 aircraft, carrying 7 pallets.  The task of handling this freighter was given to a senior colleague of mine who had never stepped into the Bombay Airport’s cargo complex.  The work-culture in the company didn’t permit a junior to give a suggestion to a senior.  Ideas from juniors were scoffed at.  The senior handling the flight would load cargo on pallets on a “first-come-first-served” basis.  The result was that every pallet had cargo for more than one destination.  This resulted in delays at Mumbai.  The gentleman was on leave for a month and I was asked to handle this flight.

As I said, the IL 76 carried 7 pallets, of which six could go into a 747-Combi (see my blog on aircraft configuration to know more).  We had combi flights operating out of Mumbai destined to Toronto, Frankfurt and Tokyo.  I’d book cargo on flights connecting three to four hours after our flight landed in Mumbai.  Six of the seven pallets would connect almost immediately out of Mumbai.  Cargo on the seventh pallet would connect the following day as the load on it was invariable for more than one destination.  A little bit of imagination and knowledge of working which helped customers get far better service.  Unfortunately the culture of the carrier I worked for didn’t reward efficiency and performance and I was given an offer I could refuse by the Jet Air Group.

For the benefit of lay readers, cargo is loaded in bellies of passenger aircraft.  Passenger seats are on the main deck.  There also exist aircraft with no passenger seats at all.  The floors are modified to accommodate cargo.  Such aircraft are called freighters.  Combis are aircraft which carry both cargo and passengers on the main deck.  Almost every airline has a cargo division; some like Lufthansa have a separate fully owned subsidiary for cargo services.  There also exist all-cargo airlines like Cargolux and Flying Tigers.  Integrators (please see my previous blog) are all-cargo airlines.

I shall speak a little more about all-cargo carriers in my next blog.