- Air affreightment services

Our company has been successfully working on the market of air affreightment. The advantages of this type of cargo transportation are as follows:

- speed

- geographic coverage

- delivery of cargo to hard-to-reach areas

Interlinks will affreight a charter plane for you to transport bulk cargo.

Air cargo transportation: market overview

Air transportation of cargo has its own share of the cargo transportation market, which is characterized by a limited yet stable product list. This fact is due to the benefits that air transportation gives to export and import merchants. These benefits typically include: high speed of transportation, regular and frequent service, absence of size constraints, low damage and loss risk, absence of necessity for customs clearance, etc.

Air cargo transportation is particularly competitive when it comes to long haul. This can simply be explained by the fact that air transportation variable costs decrease as the distance increases. Another contributing factor is the improvement in aircraft load, which leads to reduced cost of transportation. Thus, it seems rational to use air transportation services when it comes to delivery of:

-perishable goods (flowers, meat, fish, etc.);

-goods that need to be transported in cold (temperatures below 0 degrees Celsius);

-expensive goods that need to be protected against damage and loss. Also, air transportation of such goods reduces insurance costs and increases capital turnover;

-goods that need to be quickly delivered to distant areas (drugs, spares, etc.).

Air transportation of goods is performed on regular cargo-and-passenger and cargo aircrafts. When the former are used, the goods are placed in cargo compartment of passenger aircrafts, which fact means there are certain restrictions. As such, the size of transported goods is not to exceed the dimensions of cargo compartment door; the overall weight of transported goods is determined on the basis of aircraft passenger load, etc. These problems, however, can easily be avoided by using cargo aircrafts, which typically have lower transportation rates. The only shortcoming of such aircrafts is the frequency of service and limited geographic coverage.

In case there is a necessity to deliver a large amount of goods to a distant area, cargo owner is recommended to turn to air affreightment services by affreightening an aircraft featuring required load, which will deliver the freight to the final destination.

There is another peculiarity of air cargo transportation, which is to be mentioned. As a general rule, cargo owners do not have an opportunity to contact airlines directly, which means that intermediaries are a must. On the one hand, the services of forwarding agents and consolidators increase the cost of transportation; on the other hand, however, they might help significantly reduce the cost of air transportation by consolidating cargo.

The peculiarities of air cargo transportation listed above help outline the major factors that have an influence on air affreightment market conditions.

According to research, the demand for air cargo transportation is determined by the level and pace of development of global economy, social factors as well as political and energetic environment. Therefore, the volume of air cargo transportation is generally in direct proportion to increases in global GDP, international trade and in inverse proportion to fuel prices.

Thus, it is evident that air transportation has a huge potential when it comes to international trade. However, its dependence on too many factors of economic development (changes in GDP, fuel prices, product prices, etc.) explains the small share it has on the cargo transportation market.