Wait times at major US hub airports have increased from four to five hours prior to the COVID-19 pandemic to between six and seven hours on average, according to air freight forwarders and truckers. Photo credit: Shutterstock.com.
Intense demand for face masks, personal protective equipment (PPE), and other medical supplies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and a shortage of ground handling personnel is causing congestion at airports across the United States, according to air freight forwarders and truckers.
Forwarders and truckers tell JOC.com cargo pickup and drop-off wait times at major US hub airports have increased from four to five hours prior to the pandemic to between six and seven hours on average, with anecdotal reports of wait times of up to one week.
With the vast majority of passenger flights grounded since March, cargo carriers have been transporting essential cargoes on freighters and converted passenger craft, which take longer to unload than just the belly holds of passenger planes. At the same time, ground handlers have laid off or furloughed staff due to a drop in revenue during the COVID-19 crisis, further exacerbating the issue.
Brian Bourke, chief growth officer at third-party logistics provider (3PL) Seko Logistics, told JOC.com the 3PL encountered the delays firsthand when a shipment of donated surgical masks and other PPE was delayed at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for five days. “The flight arrived at O’Hare on Sunday and we weren’t able to recover the freight until Friday. That was our own shipment and we had to press hard to get it,” he explained.
A combination of factors are causing the new delays, he said. “Ground handling agents are used to handling belly freight on passenger planes, but with all these freighters and passenger plane conversions, it takes longer to load and unload today.” Bourke said delays at airports in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Henen, owing to China’s airport control and restrictions plus the delays at US airports, “are putting shippers off from flying and shipping by ocean to the West Coast where it moves by domestic air freight into inland cities or is trucked.”
Ground handler hiring a ‘chicken-and-egg’ situation
JFK International Airport in New York City is experiencing greater cargo congestion and ground delays today, said Brandon Fried, executive director of the Airforwarders Association. “There are many causes but the most frequent reason we hear is lack of staffing among ground handlers,” Fried told JOC.com. “New York has been very hard hit by coronavirus and, as a result, many workers are not showing up to unload the flights. For the time being, we’re going to be doing some suffering.”
A Boston-based forwarder noted difficulties for airlines and ground handlers in staffing up quickly when air freight volumes fluctuate. “Airport [cargo] congestion was really bad for 18 months [and] improved when air cargo volumes dropped. Now they’re rebounding as we proceed through the pandemic, but carriers and warehouse operators are not fully staffed,” said Richard Fisher, executive vice president of BTX Global Logistics, Inc.
“They don’t want to rehire until they see more freight coming and know it is a permanent flow,” he added. “It’s a chicken-and-egg situation.”
Los Angeles-based ground handler Mercury Air Cargo laid off a “considerable” number of workers after airlines grounded their fleets in March, said president and COO John Peery. “Now we’re rehiring 50 percent of them to handle the freighter services, the PPE products, and the extremely robust recovery of freight,” he told JOC.com.
Dubai-based dnata, a ground handler with US operations, furloughed “most of our 30-person staff at Dallas Fort Worth when everything [shut down] and then we brought everyone back except three,” Kaitlyn Stevens, a manager with the company, told JOC.com.
Unsurprisingly, ground handlers are turning to technology to make better use of their resources. Peery, for example, said Mercury Air Cargo also is exploring ways to automate ground handling to improve efficiency.
Swissport, which has operations across the US, uses a slot booking system from software provider Kale Logistics Solutions that allows forwarders and their truckers to schedule appointments for drop-offs and pickups at Swissport’s warehouse at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. “A trucker can reserve a slot or dock door online, specify the airway bills for pickup, and the shipments will be pulled and ready for loading,” when they arrive at the appointed time, said Donna Mullins, a vice president at Kale.
Contact Chris Barnett at [email protected].
