The air transport process further explained
The goods (or consolidations) are received at the airline’s handling agent warehouse.
Air France Cargo handling (Boeing 747)
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The handling agent will often be a separate company contracted by the airline, but cargo handling can also be an in-house function of the airline, especially at a major hub
- Examples of separate handling agents are: Aviance, Aviapartner, Menzies Aviation, Servisair, Swissport Cargo Services, WFS - Worldwide Flight Services, etc.
Also the airlines often offer their in-house cargo handling as a commercial service to other airlines. • The handling agent takes care of the air cargo handling at the airport, to and from the aircraft.
Depending on the kind of goods, destination (flight number) and urgency, delivery at the handling agent has to be done within a certain norm-time before departure (TBD) of the aircraft, also called a slot or a slot-time.
The whole physical air transport process can be pictured by the following steps:
A variant in the air cargo process can be to get to the destination in two or more steps instead of one, then the shipment goes into a transit:
In case of a transit shipment the process in between the flights will look like this:
Or in some special cases or high priority cargo services, if the connection time allows, the transit process can even look like this:
Besides the physical handling, other important functions of the handling agent are:
- To control the overall weight & balance of the airline’s aircraft on the cargo side, make a load sheet and assure flight safety (view a video explaining weight & balance here on CargoHub.nl or find another weight & balance explanation here on the Free Online Private Pilot Ground School ; are you wondering how to weigh a plane? check it out here at KLM's blog),
- To make a cargo manifest for all the goods on board, for the airline’s import and export declaration to customs
- This is a high level customs declaration as opposed to detailed customs declaration by the forwarder or customs agent
- To make a notification to the captain of the aircraft (NOTOC) to inform the crew about potential risks of the cargo on board in case of emergencies (dangerous goods, live animals, valuables, etc.), as well as for the right conditioning (temperature) of the cargo holds
- To plan & control bookings, slot-times, goods flows in the warehouse, and ULD and flight bag flows from and to the aircraft in order to prevent delays and assure correct execution of the airline’s time-table
- To plan & control worldwide ULD stock
The incoming checks before loading and departure of the aircraft are of vital importance for the airline as well as rest of the process :
