• Middle East suspensions disrupted established midpoint operations on Cathay Cargo's Europe freighter services
• The Cathay Cargo team developed temporary midpoint solutions across India before expanding operations to Astana, Kazakhstan
• Set up in quick time, these ports enabled full capacity for customers’ cargo on the busy Hong Kong-Europe routes
• The SAMEA team played a critical role in establishing the new ports and ensuring safe, reliable operations

Story in full

The air cargo industry, and Cathay Cargo in particular, has become increasingly agile in responding to global events, and this was demonstrated again this year with the conflict in the Middle East. When the situation began at the end of February, it immediately affected the region’s airports and flightpaths, and the global flow of air cargo shipments. Cathay Pacific suspended passenger flights to Dubai and Riyadh, while Cathay Cargo suspended freighter operations to both destinations too.

Prior to that, Cathay Cargo had been operating seven scheduled European Boeing 747 freighter services. These were busy flights filled with e-commerce predominantly ex-Hong Kong, while the return flights were filled with fresh produce; pharmaceutical and healthcare products; machinery and live animals – especially horses from across the continent.

Of those seven services, two called at Delhi and remained unaffected, but five called at Dubai. Without a suitable midpoint, the freighters needed to operate longer, direct routings that meant they could no longer carry a full payload. This meant the loss of around 20 per cent of available tonnage while demand was strong.

Getting back on track: quick thinking and quick action

It prompted some quick thinking and even quicker work to get things back on track for customers. However, it usually takes six months to establish an entirely new port. With safety as a priority, there are risk assessments to carry out, equipment, facilities and services need to be secured, down to finding accommodation for crew among many other tasks.

Head of Cargo Network & Scheduling Anita Lo and her team started to explore potential alternative midpoints and came to an early decision. “There was actually not much choice,” she says. “Setting up a completely new port was complex, so we looked to our online stations, and the ones that made the most sense were predominantly in India.”

Temporary solution: changing the schedule pattern

Problem solved? Not entirely. “The issue is that all our online Indian stations are actually quite congested,” says Lo. That meant changing the schedule pattern almost every month from the March start date in order to coordinate with available slots. Adding further complexity to this “ad hoc” scheduling was Chennai, which cannot handle the size of Cathay Cargo’s Boeing 747-8Fs, so that meant ensuring that the right aircraft type was deployed.

The SAMEA (South Asia Middle East and Africa) team, led by Regional Cargo Service Manager Vishal Pillai, worked wonders in responding to this irregular scheduling to ensure that the European freighters could run to capacity from an irregular schedule, down to training people on the ground to handle the freighters expediently and safely – and keep customers’ cargo moving.

“With careful planning and disciplined execution, the team enabled smooth operations and on-time turnarounds while maintaining a strong focus on safety and operational excellence,” he says.