Losers: Airlines without dedicated freight business
Passenger airlines around the world generate a significant portion of their revenue by carrying freight in their cargo holds, using space not taken up by luggage — "belly hold space," in industry parlance. These airlines don't often have on-the-ground cargo facilities, instead employing contractors like Swissport.
Given the precision required in transporting the vaccines, those airlines appear less capable of carrying the sensitive cargo.
Beyond that, however, many of those airlines have grounded large portions of their fleets, slashing their schedules as travel demand plummeted. That means that even passenger airlines with strong cargo operations have limited available capacity.
"The 'losers' will be airlines that don't have dedicated freight business units (which includes the ultra-low-cost-carriers), have poor on-time performance, or serve communities that won't be able to accommodate the vaccines, even with the dry ice," said Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst.
Still, he said, even those airlines might be able to capture some of the surging air cargo demand.
"Even though American Airlines hasn't operated dedicated freighters for decades, they have probably put the most focus on freight of the US3 [American, Delta, and United]."
American, Delta, Southwest and United have all started carrying vaccine shipments in recent months.
An earlier version of this story was written by David Slotnick.
Via PakApNews