Booking your own Boeing 747 freighter for cargo charters can be a mammoth undertaking – it’s a jumbo jet, after all, and it takes a lot to fill one up. While Cathay Cargo runs a full freighter schedule, it does sometimes have the capacity to offer its aircraft to the charter market for customers who have big-volume, outsized or very urgent shipments that need to go somewhere fast, and possibly off the network.
From an airline perspective, cargo charters can be a complex issue involving aircraft and crew availability, preparing ground handling agents (GHAs), securing take-off and landing slots, and various permissions linked to airports, customs and the nature of the cargo itself. But for customers, this ad-hoc market often comes with short and pressing lead times. How can this tension be smoothed out, even more so now as cargo capacity is limited by reduced passenger flights?
Frank Wu, Cathay Pacific’s Cargo Global Partnerships Manager, says: ‘Every charter request has to go through a panoramic review. While we strive to provide a solution that can satisfy our customers’ needs, we also need to ensure they are commercially and operationally justifiable for us under our tight aircraft rotations.’