Air Cargo

Ocean container shipping company CMA CGM has a new cargo airline that’s flying to more places.

Leasing companies are investing in pre-owned passenger planes that can be converted into freighters, and production companies are stepping up to meet their need.

Airfreight markets around the world are facing serious capacity constraints. Trade growth is overwhelming the physical ability of carriers to move goods and it’s reflected in transport prices.

The Air Line Pilots Association has accused the bargaining unit for Cargojet pilots of going along with the company’s effort to weaken new anti-fatigue rules.

Aeroméxico Cargo inaugurates twice weekly direct cargo route between Mexico City and Wuhan, China.

Airbus is competing not only against Boeing to sell small converted freighters, but it now has a new U.S. competitor in retrofitting A321s.

Prior to the implementation of AI and machine learning solutions, shipment visibility was dismal, and about one in three time-critical shipments arrived late.

As economies of scale make hydrogen production more affordable, the aviation industry’s interest in hydrogen-powered aircraft is growing.

Aircraft conversion houses tear apart passenger aircraft, then reinforce the walls and floor so they can handle heavy cargo on the main deck. Business is growing along with trade.

Purolator is considered the FedEx or UPS of Canada. The express delivery company has hired an airline to help it move more packages between the U.S. and Canada.

The German company posts record first-quarter profits and substantially raises full-year earnings and cash flow targets.

Cargojet wants a bigger slice of the U.S. e-commerce and heavy air cargo market. It’s looking for an investment opportunity and has identified new trends in e-commerce that will keep volumes high in North America.

In the prepared statement released with earnings, CEO Musser says the current market has no precedents.

he microgeometry of a shark’s skin reduces friction and allows it to move faster in the water. Lufthansa Cargo is applying that same capability to its aircraft to save fuel in a fascinating case of man copying nature.

Silk Way Airlines is flying freighters to Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. One of its airplanes may be delivering goods to an airport near you.

Olsavsky says the one-day delivery service needs to get on top of burgeoning demand and warehouse space shortages.

You may not have heard of Cainiao, but you know parent company Alibaba is the Amazon of China. Cainiao is powering Alibaba’s logistics and recently arranged air transport from Singapore to duty-free shops in China.

DSV Panalpina announced Tuesday it plans to acquire the logistics arm of Agility Public Warehousing for $4.1 billion. The deal is expected to turn the transportation and logistics company into a top 3 forwarder globally.

AirBaltic will become a cargo terminal operator at the airport in Latvia’s capital.

Lufthansa Cargo is one of more technologically advanced air cargo carriers. New material-handling systems highlight the overhaul of its main warehouse.

Cargo congestion has gone from bad to worse at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, forcing importers to wait several days to retrieve shipments and prompting two large logistics companies to migrate […]

Cargo has been the airline industry’s all-star performer since the pandemic began. Profits are soaring, but it’s not enough to overcome huge losses from the travel side.

United performed worse in the first quarter than some analysts expected, but the consumer mood has shifted as the economy reopens and United says it can get to breakeven this year on a pretax basis.

Hong Kong has finally made it easier for certain airlines to operate by easing some COVID restrictions for pilots. Cargo operators will benefit the most.

Silkways West Airlines is a large cargo operator out of Azerbaijan. It recently began flying to Columbus, Ohio.

Not X-men. Xwing. But it’s cool too if you like planes that fly by themselves.

One more quarter taking its pandemic lumps and then Delta says it will steer out of the COVID vortex and start making more money than it loses.

The Big Twin is the nickname for the Boeing 777 passenger-to-freighter conversion aircraft. It’s big, has two engines and is getting ready for metal cutting.

A giant Russian cargo jet was utilized to bring a special piece of machinery for bottling vaccines from Germany to a new manufacturing plant in the U.S. The equipment could help with the global effort to distribute COVID vaccines.

Air Canada is finally getting a lifeline from the Canadian government, potentially worth up to CA$5.9 billion.

Fuel was a nonfactor for airlines and cargo customers during the early months of COVID. Not anymore.

The author of “Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America” talks about Amazon’s push for complete dominance and what it may mean for all of us.

DHL Express has added two large freighters to its fleet to bolster service between the Asia-Pacific and the U.S. and Europe, in response to “exponential” growth in shipment volume. The […]

Air cargo carriers can barely keep up with demand. International passenger airlines are desperate for more traffic. But the two segments are inextricably linked, for better or worse.

Lufthansa Cargo and DB Schenker are flying carbon-neutral weekly routes from Germany to China, using carbon offsets and sustainable aviation fuel.

Gloom and doom could soon turn to sunny skies for U.S. airlines. It’s another story for international carriers, but everyone is managing heavy debt loads from COVID. Carriers will be more selective about what routes they fly in the future.

Pilots at Western Global Airlines are unionizing.

The company restores guarantees on domestic next-day air deliveries and U.S. air imports and exports.(Photo: Flickr/Tomás Del Coro CC BY-SA 2.0)

The air cargo industry quickly pulled together to deliver critical COVID vaccines and PPE last year. The same type of teamwork can be applied to other social needs, such as the environment and diversity, air cargo leaders say.

The company restores money-back guarantee on next-day air products and much of its international express portfolio.

The A380 has mostly been a bust as a giant passenger plane. Now Airbus is trying to salvage some value by offering to convert passenger planes into full-time cargo planes. But there’s a twist. Passengers will still ride along on the top deck. Will airlines buy in?

Amazon Air has hired Canadian all-cargo carrier Cargojet to provide crews, maintenance and insurance for two aircraft it plans to use to move e-commerce parcels.

Starting April 5, the company will resume refunds for late or missed next-day air deliveries.

ASL Airlines United Kingdom on Monday flew its first cargo flight with an ATR 72-200 turboprop freighter. It is the first carrier to receive an air operator certificate from the […]

You think you can just book your cargo on a plane to avoid the ocean shipping congestion at the Suez Canal? Guess again. Freighters were flying full even before the Ever Given got stuck, so finding space will be very difficult.

DPDHL is making large commitments related to sustainable aviation, electric last-mile delivery vehicles and social impact projects in its recently released sustainability road map.

Ghost flights — passenger aircraft with no passengers, only cargo — were never a thing before the coronavirus pandemic. In the past year, airlines have operated thousands of passenger aircraft as mini-freighters. Who are the industry leaders?

Welcome aboard, freight customers. You’re now flying CMA CGM to the U.S. East Coast instead of taking a container ship.

Trade is bottled up around the world and part of the problem is the difficulty in getting seafarers and pilots back and forth across borders.

Air Transport Services Group is riding the e-commerce wave. It’s expanding its fleet to meet demand from Amazon and other customers.

Digital transactions are necessary as air cargo volumes grow, but setting up those IT links can be tedious. The International Air Transport Association has a new tool to make that process much easier.

USA Jet Airlines, a small cargo operator, is converting old MD-88s into freighters. Airlines gave up on this plane, so why is anyone investing to reuse these aircraft?

One of the Kalitta cargo companies is trying to stop a small Mexican airline from providing cross-border service between Mexico and the U.S., a market that it serves too. It doesn’t want free trade in transport services because it might cut into its business.

Hong Kong has ratcheted up quarantine requirements on inbound pilots, escalating tensions with the U.S. and impacting the operations of express carriers UPS and FedEx.

The company moves to broaden its footprint and introduce services as it posts stellar fiscal 2021 third-quarter results.

Smith sees no let-up in the demand for the company’s services.

Sun Country normally flies to sunny destinations. But with Amazon as its cargo customer, it’s heading to Fairbanks, Alaska.

There’s no time for deliberation these days if you want to get high-value cargo shipped by air. It’s a strong seller’s market in the air cargo world. If you see it, book it and don’t worry about the price.

Chicago Rockford and Cologne Bonn airports operate under the shadow of Chicago O’Hare and Frankfurt airports. But they are rising stars in the cargo arena and have decided to pool their resources.

Edmonton International Airport is investing in more cargo capacity to support e-commerce and other industries that increasingly are seeking air transport.

E-commerce is the growth engine for air cargo. It’s why DHL Express just added a new air/parcel hub in Milan, Italy.

Icelandair is raising capital with a sale-leaseback of two large jets and then turning them into freighters. It’s an innovative move.

E-commerce is like a monster that can’t be contained and Amazon is growing with it. The online retailer just bought some aircraft for the first time. Now it has bought a piece of a cargo airline.

FedEx pilots want the company to stop releasing crews into Hong Kong for rest periods because of aggressive testing and quarantine restrictions that subject them to infection and loss of personal freedom.

Rockford International Airport is fast becoming an air cargo hub. Amazon and UPS have big operations there, and construction is underway to increase capacity for freighters and storage for new customers.

Air cargo is a good news, bad news story this year. Shipment volumes are at pre-crisis levels. But cargo is joined at the hip with passenger airlines, which are cutting more flights and struggling to survive.

Boeing 767s are coveted by all-cargo carriers. LATAM Airlines is doing an in-house swap of passenger planes to its cargo division, which will send them to Boeing to convert into freighters.

The company sets ambitious fleet electrification goals and establishes a center at Yale University to research climate-capture techniques.

Brian Whitley’s airfreight business has been growing rapidly, but the events of 2020 forced him to adapt to quickly changing conditions.

Kalitta Air pilots on Tuesday ratified a new collective bargaining agreement, which the Air Line Pilots Association says significantly improves retirement benefits and working conditions. The four-year labor contract covers […]

The airline industry took a massive punch from the pandemic last year, but most carriers have stayed on their feet. Airlines and their employees say Congress should inject one more dose of aid for jobs so they can start flying more quickly once vaccinations increase and people are ready to travel.

CBP seized the Hong Kong-bound corn flakes frosted with cocaine at an express consignment facility near Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

Airfreight markets are topsy-turvy in the COVID era, but importers and exporters can count on one thing: paying two to three times normal rates. CFOs will have to increase their transport budgets if they want goods to move quickly.

DHL Aviation is turning over every stone to find economical capacity to haul packages for DHL’s express unit. The latest moves involve a travel airline flying parcels instead of passengers and a new Airbus converted freighter that few others have.

United Airlines on Friday became the second airline to pay millions of dollars in penalties for a scheme to defraud the U.S. Postal Service for international mail delivery.

Rickenbacker Airport near Columbus, Ohio, is named after World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker. The airport is a regional hero, supporting more than 15,000 jobs, with a $2.5 billion annual economic impact.

FreightWaves is bringing back its in-person events this year with the F3: Future of Freight Festival in November, celebrating all things freight in a communitywide celebration throughout the city of Chattanooga.

United Airlines took down its Boeing 777-200s with the type of engine that disintegrated on takeoff from Denver last weekend. Now the impact is becoming more clear for cargo customers.

The dog days of summer may have a different meaning this year. Large numbers of explosives-sniffing dogs will be crawling over airport warehouses by July 1 to help meet a requirement for screening shipments riding on dedicated cargo planes.

Postal Service chief defends his strategy to shift mail from planes to trucks despite the resulting longer delivery times.

Kuehne + Nagel will become the top global air and ocean freight management company when it completes its purchase of Hong Kong’s Apex Logistics International.

Container shipping line CMA CGM wants to be an airline too. Its new air cargo unit has identified Chicago as its first destination and is giving preferential space on its aircraft to subsidiary CEVA Logistics.

United Airlines’ cargo division has been riding high the past year. But it could lose some resources as the company realigns the fleet to make up for the suspension of two dozen 777-200s after an engine blowout.

Passenger airlines have treated cargo as an afterthought. The pandemic is making them realize the benefit of a diversified revenue stream.

Global K9 Protection Group is a big provider of bomb-sniffing dogs. Many of them are dedicated to air cargo security. Now the company is using dogs to detect COVID-19 on people at Miami Heat games.

Emir Pineda, the Miami-Dade Aviation Department’s manager for aviation and trade logistics, explains why Miami International Airport reached a record cargo level last year and how it is a key distribution point for COVID vaccines.

2002: “It’s a myth that we are out of land,” said Jim Larson of the NY/NJ Port Authority, discussing the airport’s cargo possibilities.

Kuehne + Nagel is the second-largest logistics services provider in the world. It just got bigger, swallowing up Hong Kong’s Apex International.

Brussels Airport may be the busiest airport when it comes to moving coronavirus vaccines by air.

Air crews don’t like flying to Hong Kong these days because COVID testing there is invasive and they could end up in mass quarantine facilities. UPS pilots are testing a new rapid antigen test that could alert them in time to stay out of Hong Kong.

Mud dauber wasps in Australia are setting up home inside pieces of sensitive aircraft equipment. It’s more than a nuisance. It could be dangerous.

You’ve probably flown in a Boeing 737-800, a next-generation variant of this popular 737, but when they are put to pasture they become valuable assets for all-cargo airlines. ASL Airlines in Europe is snapping some up and converting them to freighters.

Amazon is an e-commerce rocket ship. Making those deliveries possible is Amazon Air, which is growing so fast it could make it possible for more people to receive orders within a day.

Preeti Pande, the hydrogen solution provider’s chief marketing officer, comes with extensive fuel cell industry experience and a Ph.D.

Digital freight forwarder Flexport can now link consignee order data to shipments from suppliers.

The U.N. and World Health Organization are working hard to make sure less-developed countries get their fair share as more vaccine supplies become available. Transportation and logistics is a big part of their organizing effort.

2005: Airbus is ready to break Boeing’s 30-year monopoly on making large passenger aircraft.

The logistics of getting flowers from warm growing climates to people’s doorsteps is complex. Airlines play a big role.

Ocean carriers as airlines? No one thought an online retailer would own a private airline until Amazon did it. The ocean carrier also owns a logistics company. You connect the dots.

Amid heightened scrutiny over the direction of the company, Forward Air’s management team defends its current strategy. Fourth-quarter results were negatively impacted by a December cyberattack.