British air space “returning to normal”
British air space “returning to normal”
The U.K. arm of the air freight wholesaler AMI said business is “rapidly returning to normal service' after six days of flight embargoes within British airspace due to last week's eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano.
AMI said it is in contact with all carriers to whom cargo was delivered before the shutdown, securing rebookings and issuing new flight confirmations to its customers.
'Cargo that was held by AMI in its own facilities at the time of the airspace shutdown is now being booked with carriers, mostly using AMI's major pre-booked space allocations,' the company said. 'AMI is now open again for new bookings, which are also being fed into its pre-booked space.'
Throughout the six-day flight shutdown, AMI operated a partial service for its customers, rerouting traffic for European destinations onto its Eurotrux intra-European road network. The company's Heathrow warehouse was also able to ease pressure elsewhere by continuing to take in cargo, ready for shipment as soon as flights restarted.
'The picture is not yet fully clear, just a few hours into the reopening of U.K. air space,' said Sharon Wright, vice president Europe for AMI. 'Some carriers are rapidly returning to normal, while others are still repositioning stranded aircraft. There are also backlogs everywhere, including many airline sheds that must dispatch some cargo before they can accept more. It will take some days to return to normal.'
Wright said she hoped the industry might learn from the ash crisis.
'Airlines — particularly freighter operators — need to look at ways of working around a problem like this, by quickly adopting alternative gateways outside the no-fly zone, which we could then feed by road,' she said. 'On a government level, there must be a Europe-wide contingency plan in place, should such a situation ever arise again.'
Most of the news emanating from Europe on Thursday came in the form of reprisals aimed at European aviation and transport officials. Airlines insist governments were slow to understand the depth of the crisis airspace shutdowns inflicted on carriers, and overreacted to the dangers posed by the ash cloud.
U.K. Transport Minister Andrew Adonis even admitted Wednesday that officials were 'too cautious' in their appraisal of the situation.
Meanwhile, the head of cargo for one of Europe's major airlines wrote this week that the volcano was able to do what the air cargo industry has long failed to do: illuminate its importance to the public.
'In a very, very perverse way, this Icelandic volcano sees to it that air cargo (or, as in this case, the lack thereof) is all of a sudden recognized by the widest possible public as a key factor in a globalized world — something we mortals definitely failed to achieve during the last ' well, ever,' Oliver Evans, Swiss Air chief cargo officer, wrote in his blog Wednesday.
'That certainly is not much of a consolation to hundreds of thousands of helpless passengers, stranded in airports all over the continent. But nevertheless here is a lesson for us all: Let's be more, well, volcanic when it comes to spreading the word about air cargo! Because that is what needs to be done anyway — and I am absolutely sure, we can do so with none of the grim side effects that were visited upon the world by some hothead on a remote island in the North Atlantic.'
