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Low-cost passenger airlines usually are not in the running when perishables specialists look for capacity, but these are unusual times.
Canadian forwarder Flying Fresh Air Freight is exploring using Edmonton-based Flair Airlines for lift from the west coast to Toronto.
Options on one of Canada’s chief trunk routes are a far cry from normal times. Air Canada’s schedule meltdown from Covid-19 reduced the airline’s operations between Vancouver and Toronto to one daily flight – a poor choice for perishables, which preferably are moved overnight in the domestic market, noted Flying Fresh CEO and chairman Brendan Harnett.
To make matters worse, this comes at a time when Canadian perishables shippers are turning to the domestic market as international destinations – especially the big China market – have turned cold.
Air Canada has been stepping up its international flights, notably cargo missions, but on the domestic front it has still been in retreat.
At the end of last month it suspended 30 domestic routes in response to weak passenger demand, including sectors like Moncton-Ottawa, Windsor-Montreal and North Bay-Toronto.
Bhagwahn Randawe, director of business development at Rutherford Global Logistics, acknowledged that perishables shippers were facing challenges, probably more than most other sectors.
“It can be hard for the growers for both their domestic and international business with limitations of flights, but overall I am happy with what we have moved in the past three months during the lockdown,” he said. Rutherford’s focus is very much on the international arena.
South of the border, Bob Imbriani, senior vice-president international of Team Worldwide, said perishables and similar items that required expedited moves had been particularly hard hit by the radical shrinkage of domestic bellyhold capacity in the US market. Carriers like Delta have trimmed their domestic flying to about 35% of pre-Covid-19 operations, he noted.
Besides affecting domestic flows, the demise of much domestic widebody lift is also reducing options for forwarders and carriers looking to move cargo through interline activities at major gateways. However, this option was not much in play before Covid-19, noted Jens Tubbesing, CEO of Airline Network Services.
“There was so much capacity from anywhere to anywhere,” he said, adding that domestic lift was not really an option to feed international flights anyway because rates were higher than for some international sectors.
The New York-Los Angeles trunk route was well used, but chiefly for domestic cargo that needed expedited transportation, such as seafood going from the east coast to California, he said.
Now forwarders and airlines are facing another obstacle to moving cargo from inland points to major gateways. After the initial surge, outbound rates from the US to Europe have fallen back to levels that cannot absorb the trucking costs.
“I can’t truck cargo from Chicago to New York. The trucking cost will kill any possibility of that,” Mr Tubbesing said. “On our flights out of New York, all the cargo is from New York, Boston, Philadelphia; not from further afield. Trucking is limited to places like Milwaukee.”
Gateway options are also on the wane. American Airlines is no longer using Los Angeles International Airport as an international hub. Management expects its international longhaul capacity next summer will be down 25% compared with 2019.
Overall international lift is on the rise, though.
“A good sign is more airlines are coming back into Canada and, with Air Canada opening up more routes, we’ve more choices to book our shipments,” Mr Randawe remarked.
Still, a lot of destinations are challenging to reach, especially when it comes to cargo with special requirements.
“One of the greatest challenges we have faced is the movement of temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals and pharma-related products to places like South America,” reported Alex Lavergne, senior freight specialist at AGO Transportation.
“Air Canada and Air France are normally some of the most reliable options for this type of cargo departing from Canada heading abroad, but with their severely diminished passenger flights the overall ability to move temperature-sensitive cargo was directly affected. Air Canada has since made efforts to resume service to some key South American airports, but the availability and capacity are nowhere near what they were before the Covid-19 pandemic,” he continued.
