Charter brokers stand by as prolonged Suez Canal shutdown would mandate pivot to air

Airfreight charter brokers have not yet seen a clear increase in charter requests stemming from the blockage of the Suez Canal by the March 23 grounding of the Ever Given container ship , but next week will likely bring a surge of such requests if current methods fail to free the ship, and modal shift to airfreight materializes, freight forwarders and charter brokers are predicting. However, airfreight capacity remains well below 2019 levels on many international routes, leaving passenger freighters as the most flexible option for adding capacity to cover supply chain shortages caused by the slowdown in ocean freight. [caption id="attachment_95141" align="alignright" width="450"] Emirates has operated more than 27,000 passenger freighter flights since March 2020. Photo/Emirates[/caption] “Requests have increased, but we do not have enough qualitative data at this stage to know if any of our confirmed bookings are a result of the blockage or independent,” Ed Gillett, director at CharterSync, told Air Cargo World . The CharterSync team has seen an increase in charter flight inquiries on the China-EU trade lane, suggesting forwarders are looking to “hedge against the unknown delay caused by the blockage,” according to Gillett. Air Charter Service confirmed that only three days after the grounding, it is too early to notice a significant increase in charter requests resulting from the Suez Canal blockage. “If the situation doesn’t get resolved in the next few days or weeks, we imagine that firms which require air cargo urgently will have no choice but to turn to airfreight,” Justin Lancaster, group commercial director, told Air Cargo World . Freight forwarders hope to avoid that situation, as emergency air capacity is hard to come by in the current market. “The hope is that by taking the fuel out and the high tide coming in, they can push it off and get it cleared so that the impact will be just these couple of days,” Evan Rosen, president for the Americas region and global chief commercial officer at Sri Lanka-based 3PL EFL Global, told Air Cargo World . EFL relies on a roughly 60/40 mix of air and ocean freight, Rosen said, with much of its business that transits the Suez Canal made up of apparel and textiles for retail customers. If the current approach doesn’t unground the Ever Given, “it’s going to be a weeks issue, not a days issue,” which will mandate a pivot to air that will be difficult to achieve in the impacted markets, said Rosen. “There should be a significant pivot to airfreight from places like India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, which is not very easy to do — there’s still not a lot of capacity from that region into the U.S., you don’t have the passenger flights and that’s how a lot of the cargo would move out of places like India and Bangladesh,” Rosen said. “That’s going to be pretty difficult do without placing cargo charter flights, and they’re not really available right now with end-of-quarter and electronics [demand] driving a lot of the capacity to China.” EFL Global has opted for passenger freighters to fill the airfreight gaps, and Rosen said while idle freighters are mostly unheard of in the current market, more pax freighters could add capacity during the pivot to airfreight. “We will continue to build up our current network that we have today with Emirates, where we are running converted passenger aircraft from those origins into Dubai, and then connecting to our charter capacity that we have weekly scheduled into Columbus, Ohio,” at Rickenbacker Airport (LCK), Rosen said. EFL also relies on passenger freighters operated by Qatar Airways, connecting in Doha. “We were going to Emirates to see if they can give us additional capacity to be able to deal with the uptick in demand,” he said, adding that more passenger freighters “might be the only way to get additional capacity” if the Suez Canal blockage stretches into the weeks ahead.

Charter brokers stand by as prolonged Suez Canal shutdown would mandate pivot to air

Freighter capacity is scarce, but passenger freighters may fill the gaps

Emirates, Qatar lead in pax-freighter ops one year on

Emirates, Qatar lead in pax-freighter ops one year on

Emirates, Qatar lead in pax-freighter ops one year on

Cargo Facts Free Newsletters

Cargo Facts Connect Podcast

Follow Us

Welcome Back!

Retrieve your password