Aircraft production, technology and GBA overlooked 10 years ago

Air cargo leaders have said that technology, aircraft production and market potential in the Greater Bay Area are amongst the issues that were underestimated in importance 10 years ago.

During an ‘Industry Leaders’ panel discussion at TIACA Air Cargo Forum, participants were asked what they underestimated or got wrong 10 years ago in terms of how air cargo would evolve.

Referencing the current demand for widebody freighters, Stanislas Brun, chief cargo officer at Etihad Cargo suggested that OEMs could have sped up aircraft parts manufacturing to match market evolution and demand that has increased over the last 10 years.

“When you look at the lack of development in this matter, every year we are decreasing the number of aircraft delivered. It is scary, as we are not necessarily going in the right direction. And I believe we are in this situation for the next 15 years.

“Ten years ago, I don’t necessarily think it was an issue, but it was already the beginning of the end.”

Meanwhile, Dominic Perret, Cathay director of cargo, said that he believed he had not fully realised the market potential of the Greater Bay Area (Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao) or GBA.

“Being based in Hong Kong, if we look 10 years ago at how we thought about the Chinese mainland and specifically the Greater Bay Area (GBA), we really thought about it as a key manufacturing base and source of exports. I think what we underestimated and what we’re seeing now as a great opportunity it’s also become a tremendous market opportunity in its own right.”

He pointed out the large population and GDP of the GBA, and rapid technology developments in Shenzhen, for example.

“We’ve really seen the Chinese mainland and GBA specifically develop as an import market as well as staying as a significant source of exports,” he said.

“A lot of our focus has been on connecting cargo through Hong Kong to the wider GBA” through flights and multimodal solutions.

Elsewhere, intermodal solutions are now an area that Air Canada Cargo is concentrating on a lot more closely compared to 10 years ago, according to Air Canada’s managing director, cargo operations & transformation, Janet Wallace.

She explained the carrier’s focus used to be more on passenger schedules and supply chain lanes, but this has now shifted to intermodal supply chain networks.

Air Canada Cargo has moved “towards supply chain networks fuelled by the freighter capacity, mixing it with the passenger network as well as trucking”.

She said: “It’s very intermodal and all the potential is there in terms of where we can go in the future.”

However, she added that what she had really underestimated was the scale of work needed to advance digitalisation across the industry.

“The thing that I really underestimated was the amount of paper that drives this business and whether there is enough goodwill to get rid of it across all the stakeholders.

“We talk about digitalisation, we also talk about AI, and there’s a big gap in between the two. How we are going to cross that chasm needs a lot of goodwill from everybody.”

Jared Azcuy, chief executive of ground handler AGI Group, agreed that technology should have been more of a focus area, alongside growth within the business.

“I think there was a time when I felt differently about technology. Today we’ve fully embraced it and when people say AI, I know what that means,” he said.

He also remarked: “We’ve gone through a tremendous amount of growth, in Chicago specifically as well as the rest of the country. There was a time when we were slow to gain additional space for our growing customer base and the growth that they were having. We had to get up to speed on that.”