Support for the idea of separate bilaterals for air cargo came from the Jack Boisen, vice president cargo for Continental and president of TIACA, the International Air Cargo Association, in the second presentation on air freightliberalisation.
“TIACA believes separate air cargo bilaterals should be pursued as a fi rst step to full liberalisation,” Boisen said. “Cargo bilaterals should also not be held back by developing countries in order to protect their home carrier.”
TIACA’s efforts to promote traffi c right liberalisation had included reaching out to other organisations, such as the International Civil Aviation Organization, where Boisen said TIACA was enjoying“continued opportunities to influencepolicy in a broad number of areas”, andworking to establish a multilateral groupof countries supporting fi fth, sixth andseventh freedoms.
The organisation had also produced several papers on the economic benefi ts of liberalised air cargo rights, showing how they supported jobs and promotedeconomic growth.
Boisen then moved on to outline another area on the TIACA “leadership agenda”, which was the issue of climate change. Here he said the organisation’s aim was to counter the misinformation that had made air cargo a target forenvironmental protestors.
“Air cargo accounts for such a small percentage of overall carbon emissions – just 0.3 to 0.6 per cent,” he told delegates. “But it is area that is becoming political, and we are attempting to dive in and establish the facts.”
As an example of how one-sided the debate had been so far, he cited as an example a recent Wall Street Journal article about worms and compost. “It turns out that worms are not good for global warming,” Boisen said. “They create nitrous oxide, which is far more damaging to the environment than CO². Yet it is air cargo that gets targeted byenvironmental activists.”
Boisen said the air cargo industry needed to respond by making more noise about its environmental achievements. “At Continental we have spent a lot of money on greening our airline, but we just didn’t know we were doing it: We thought we were just trying to savecosts,” he said.
“For example, we retrofi tted the entire fl eet with wing tips and so saved fi ve per cent of our fuel bill. And at our hubs, our aircraft no longer taxi, they are towed by electric tugs.”
TIACA was planning to expand on these ideas at its next AGM in Copenhagen.“We plan to spend a great dealof effort on developing our resources inthis area,” Boisen concluded.