According to British Airways World Cargo’s senior vice president for Europe and the Americas, David Shepherd, despite these challenging conditions and a 6.4 per cent drop in capacity, BAWC’s cargo volume has, however, been outperforming the market average.
“Competition is fierce in Europe but we have done a good job of protecting our market share and our performance for the half year ending November 2008 saw an improvement in our European performance,” he said.
“Our premium products continue to do well and over the last half year we’ve seen a 29 per cent growth in premium services through Northern Europe.”
However, BA World Cargo’s parent company, British Airways reported recently that its cargo traffic, in cargo tonne kilometres (CTK), was down by 7.2 per cent in November, versus the same month in 2007. This compared to a 5.9 per cent fall in passenger traffic in November, measured in revenue passenger kilometres.
Traffic steady
BA World Cargo’s financial controller, Sean Doyle, in announcing the airline’s first half results recently, said traffic had remained steady out of most areas, including Europe due in part to the improved product mix which has helped to drive yield.
“From an operational perspective, (Heathrow Airport’s) Terminal Five has been working efficiently for us and our investment in additional drivers and vehicles is paying dividends.
“Our last set of financial results showed our strongest-ever operational performance through London Heathrow, which is in no small part due to the efficiencies of Terminal 5,” Shepherd said.
“Additionally, over the past 12 months we’ve been making a concerted effort to improve our core handling and planning which includes the successful introduction of a programme of continuous improvement through both Ascentis, our main storage facility, and Premia, our premium handling centre,” he said.
Asked about the airline’s traffic ratio at UK airports, Shepherd said: “We carry roughly 60 per cent of traffic ex Heathrow; 30 per cent ex Stansted and 10 per cent ex Gatwick.
BA said it is to suspend services from London Heathrow to Kolkata in India and Dhaka in Bangladesh as part of a reduction in its planned 2009 summer schedule. Short-haul services from London Gatwick to Dublin and Zurich are also to be cut.
Shepherd pointed out that the global financial crisis has hit the European automotive industry particularly hard and to a lesser extent, the engineering and retail sectors.
“Our network strength is a key differentiator for us in Europe – as we serve over 200 destinations across 80 countries, offering customers access to the world’s largest wholly-owned global network,” Shepherd said.
BA World Cargo’s key hubs are London Heathrow; Frankfurt and Milan. “We handle a wide variety of products from these hubs including perishables.
Our main perishables traffic is generated through Rotterdam, Spain, Cyprus and Tel Aviv,” Shepherd said.
“We carry a variety of perishables traffic through these stations including citrus fruits, flowers, tomatoes and bell peppers,” he said.
Asked about plans for its fleet, Shepherd said: “We currently wet-lease three Boeing 767-400 freighters and have no plans to increase or decrease this number.” About 75 per cent of its volumes are bellyhold cargo with the remainder carried aboard its freighter network.
Coping with the crisis
Although having done well so far through the year, BAWC executives concede no one can fully buck the market downturn.
But being prepared and leveraging its well-established schedule of freighter operations out of China and India, which includes maintaining its established B747-400 freighter schedules in order to provide “consistent and dependable” services through both good times and bad, is crucial the carrier said.
The carrier also benefits from being a bit more cautious in putting capacity into the Asian market, with its current capacity pretty much limited to the three wet leased B747-400Fs.
Middle East services
BA World Cargo also recently announced it will resume services to Saudi Arabia with the launch of five weekly flights to Jeddah and five weekly flights to Riyadh, from March 29, 2009 – the first time the carrier will operate Saudi flights after suspending its services to the country in March 2005 in response to reduced customer demand.
The B777 Riyadh flights and Jeddah B767 services will both depart from London Heathrow, Terminal 5.
The service will offer customers in Saudi Arabia access to BA’s global network and take advantage of the airline’s excellent connections to the US and Europe.
The UK carrier currently operates six frequencies a week out of Hong Kong and two a week from Shanghai Pudong to London Stansted. These fl ights are all routed through different cities in India including four services from Delhi, two from Mumbai and two from Chennai.
On the outbound leg from the UK to Hong Kong and Shanghai, the freighters are routed via Germany, Georgia and the Middle East.
Demand for services into Saudi Arabia has grown considerably as a result of significant increases in inward investment into the country and the ongoing importance of the oil market. BA World Cargo anticipates the bulk of cargo to be building materials and equipment designed for the oil industry.
The Saudi and British governments agreed to liberalise the aviation market in June this year, increasing the number of weekly flights between the two countries from 13 to 35.
Other services
BA World Cargo also recently announced the appointment of a new customer service team in Thailand.
Effective earlier in November, the new team replaced Qantas Freight, the carrier’s previous general sales agent in Thailand, and is now based in a new office at WFS-PG Cargo Suvarnabhumi Airport.
The creation of a new sales office – established following a mutually amicable agreement with Qantas Freight – represents a significant boost to BA World Cargo’s operations in Thailand, where the carrier aims to build on its solid performance.
BA World Cargo serves Thailand with seven weekly B747-400 line flights, which route London-Bangkok-Sydney- Bangkok-London.
British Airways said it commenced operation recently from Terminal 5 to Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA), Hyderabad, offering bellyholdcapacity to customers.
British Airways operates five weekly non-stop flights between Hyderabad and London and it is the only airline to offer direct flights between the two cities.