DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight arm within Deutsche Post DHL, has begun a temperature controlled airfreight service between Brussels and Cincinnati and vice versa. The DHL Aviation Boeing 747-400 freighter aircraft will operate the 8.30-hour flight six times per week in each direction and offers reserved space for life sciences products. Real-time tracking and temperature measurement data is available on each flight and can be accessed via a dedicated web portal.
The airfreight market may be on the up again, but this is not a time to be operating freighters out of Europe - unless, perhaps, you are Lufthansa Cargo.
The Miami-Dade Aviation Department (MDAD) convinced LAN Cargo to build its first U.S. maintenance facility at Miami International Airport. The $23.9m project is expected to create more than 300 jobs in the first five years.
The air cargo industry must act to fulfill the educational needs of the next generation of managers for the worldwide airfreight industry, according to the results of a two-year research project.
The Stifel Logistics Confidence Index entered 2014 on a positive note. Despite a month-to-month 0.9 point decline in the overall Index reading to 56.6, the Logistics Confidence Index has remained above the 50-level for 12 months, meaning the market continues to exhibit a healthy confidence in air and sea freight forwarding. To get a better view of global air and ocean trade, Stifel has partnered with Transport Intelligence to create the Stifel Logistics Confidence Index (LCI), a monthly survey of international shippers and forwarders that measures freight activity across several European-based trade lanes.
Significant further testing must be conducted into the provision of advance data for air cargo and mail parcels security screening. Furthermore, common global standards and procedures must be developed to avoid potentially serious disruption to the flow of world trade, according to The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA).
Figures from the International Air Transport Association show a 6.1-percent growth in demand measured in freight tonne kilometers for airfreight in November 2013 over the same month in the previous year. November's performance is an improvement on the 4.4-percent year-on-year demand expansion recorded in October. This continues an improvement trend in the weak air cargo markets which has been developing over 2013.
Supply chain and logistics play key roles in responding to both acute and chronic humanitarian crises. Whether the cause is a natural disaster, armed conflict or simply undeveloped infrastructure, Jarrod Goentzel says the MIT Humanitarian Response Lab is working to improve supply chain response.
