AviationLife

Spotlight

Air cargo management

With rising fuel costs, more airlines are looking at alternate sources of revenue to maintain their operations. The potential from the air cargo sector to augment this revenue is huge, but is the service sector bridging this divide? By Andrea Lopez

Passenger revenue accounts for a majority of an airline's business, however rising fuel costs and more investment in larger aircraft has made it necessary for an airline to make maximum use of all its available resources, which includes air cargo. Experts in the industry feel that India has the potential to develop into a global air cargo hub, particularly because of its trade relations with other countries and its geographical location. Moreover, it has been seen that the market for domestic cargo in India is large. At the recently concluded Air Cargo India Summit, minister for civil aviation, Praful Patel said that India stands at the threshold of becoming an important hub in the international air cargo industry. Asia has been projected to lead with the growth in trade. Dinesh Keskar, senior vice-president (sales), commercial airplanes, Boeing said that the Indian air cargo market was experiencing a phenomenal growth along with GDP of the country. The world air cargo market grew at 5.1 per cent between October 2006-2007, and is expected to triple by 2025 with the highest growth rate of 6.9 per cent, according to Keskar. If this is to be believed, the requirement for cargo handling staff is going to increase and moreover, the business potential that this could generate would be tremendous.

Few institutes in the country have curriculums designed on the lines of IATA that train students in air cargo handling. Amit Gopinath, IATA instructor at the India International Trade Centre (IITC) feels that the potential for careers in air cargo management is huge but is not being sufficiently tapped. The IATA/FIATA International Cargo Agents Training Program imparts training for identifying and management of dangerous goods, radioactive materials as well as packing, labelling and documentation of goods. "The focus on revenue and ticketing along with cargo handling has been developing in the last few years, but it is yet to be taken seriously. Most airlines prefer DGR qualified candidates and we do not have sufficiently-trained people to handle these demands, which led us to launch this course," he says. Gopinath is of the opinion that four to five years down the line, there will be a 14-15 per cent increase in flight operations and therefore, a subsequent increase in flight operations. The scope for students to get into cargo and ground handling is more than other operations. He is of the opinion that the airline business focuses more on volumes that margins and that eventually more airlines will begin to realise that their revenues will have to come from cargo, rather than passenger revenue. Moreover, he points out that from the career perspective, the chances of finding employment in an airline is higher in these jobs than other ground jobs. "We want to make students more industry-oriented rather than certificate-oriented," he said, adding that when the Nagpur cargo hub is developed, there will be competition in the surface freight business as well."