Author: Admin

22 / 10 / 2021

By Damian Brett

Demand for freighter conversions is expected to remain strong over the coming years as the number of freighter flights surges compared with pre-pandemic levels.

The latest figures from consultant IBA show that in September there were 132,000 freighter flights compared with 95,000 during the same month in 2019.

IBA added that at least 110,000 freighter flights have taken place each month since May 2020.

Phil Seymour, President of IBA, said: “The Coronavirus pandemic has shaken up the freighter market like never before, driving a sustained growth in demand which we believe will result in around 1,000 conversions over the next 10 years.

“Despite the next wave of wide-body converted freighters such as the Boeing 777-300ERSF and Airbus A330-300P2F starting to come on stream, demand for legacy aircraft such as the Boeing 767-300ERSF remains strong.”

IBA said that in the main narrowbody segment, the Boeing 737-800 now dominates with 36 aircraft converted so far in 2021, up from 27 in 2020, with a further aircraft committed to conversion in future.

The Boeing 757-200 continues to be the “pre-eminent candidate for conversion” in the large narrowbody segment with eight aircraft converted so far in 2021, 10 in 2020, and an additional 30 are due to be converted in the future.

“However, conversions of the Airbus A321-200 are now growing with three so far in 2021, three in 2020, and with a further 19 set to be converted in the future,” IBA added.

Looking at conversion costs, IBA data shows the B757-300 averages at $5.2m compared with $6.1m for the Airbus A321-200. The average conversion cost for the B767-300ER is $15.8m in comparison to $18.4m for the A330-300. The conversion of a B737-800 is $4.3-$6m.

IBA estimated the cost of B777-300ER conversions offered by IAI to be around $34m to $37m.

“As the feedstock of Boeing 757s dries up, the prices of A321 aircraft will reduce and more of this type will be committed for conversions,” the consultant said. “The typical value range of the A321PCF currently stands between $21.5m and $24m.

“The Airbus A330 family is currently the most popular widebody aircraft in the market in terms of purchases for freighter conversions. Feedstock pricing in the A330 cluster is rapidly reducing, with 2009-build Rolls-Royce powered A330-300s, priced at $25m before Covid-19, now available for around $15m.

The typical value and lease rate range for converted Airbus A330-200P2F and Airbus A330-300P2F is between $27m and $38m.

The trading range for a B737-800SF is between $18m and $19.5m but newer aircraft might attract values of just over $20m.

Published: Oct. 25, 2021 at 9:52 p.m. ET

By Associated Press

Move intended to relieve logjam of cargo ships waiting to unload

A truck drives past cargo containers stacked at the Port of Los Angeles, the nation’s busiest container port, on Oct. 15 in San Pedro, Calif.

LOS ANGELES — In an effort to ease congestion at the nation’s busiest port complex, officials said Monday that they will start fining shipping companies whose cargo containers linger for too long at marine terminals.

The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach said in a statement that arriving containers scheduled to be moved by trucks will be allowed to stay for nine days before fines start accruing. Containers set to move by rail can stay at the ports for three days.

After that, ocean carriers will be charged $100 per container, increasing in $100 increments per container per day, the statement said.

The new rules will go into effect Nov. 1.

“The terminals are running out of space, and this will make room for the containers sitting on those ships at anchor,” Port of Long Beach Executive Director Mario Cordero said in the statement.

It’s the latest step aimed at relieving the logjam of cargo ships that has interrupted the global supply chain. The backlog prompted the Biden administration to allow the port complex to operate 24 hours a day to try to get goods unloaded and out to consumers.

About 40% of all shipping containers entering the U.S. come through the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.

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Tori Richards

The Port of Los Angeles with containers, ships and trucks is shown on Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 13, 2021. President Joe Biden announced a deal to expand operations at the Port of Los Angeles in hopes of ending the logjam of ships waiting to unload. The supply chain squeeze has caused climbing prices and delays in delivery that are threatening the U.S. economy and holiday shopping. (Dean Musgrove/The Orange County Register via AP) Dean Musgrove/AP

Los Angeles ports are buried under 40-foot shipping containers, but across the sea, Chinese businesses are begging for them.

As the ubiquitous steel boxes clog the ports, local streets, and seemingly any unused lot around the coast, both California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia have jumped into action alleviating red tape that had curtailed storage options.

Late Friday, Garcia waived an ordinance that prohibited stacking containers more than two high. Now the limit is four — or five with special approval. Also last week, Newsom ordered the state to search for government or privately owned parcels to lease for additional storage.

RECORD 100 SHIPS WAITING OFFSHORE AT LA PORTS

“A year ago, you would just do a transaction, bring an empty in and get a load out on the same chassis,” said a trucker named Brian. “Now [ports] are not accepting any empties because they are not going back on the ships. We’re told the ships cannot make money on the empties.”

Meanwhile, in China, bicycle maker Derrick Tian spent weeks searching for a container to export his products to United States stores in time for Black Friday and Christmas. His small business has been crippled by COVID-19 lockdowns, and now he fears that a long list of orders will be jeopardized by a container shortage.

“The biggest problem is to get your goods out of China,” Tian told the South China Morning Post.

The lack of containers in China creates another problem: skyrocketing shipping costs that are eventually passed on to the consumer.

Walmart containers are stacked in a lot near Los Angeles harbor Tori Richards

“We have a full-blown container crisis on our hands,” admitted freight transporter Hillebrand on its website. The company said China was the first to recover from COVID-19 and started shipping in large numbers before America had recovered. Another problem is the lack of financial incentive for shipping companies to return the containers. Carriers get 66 cents per nautical mile from Shanghai to Los Angeles but only 10 cents for a return trip, Hillebrand said.

So while China ramps up its production of new containers to meet the demand, even more of these metal boxes are headed toward Los Angeles from the South.

Up to 2,000 empties from cities such as Charleston, Savannah, and Houston are en route to Southern California, American Shipper is reporting. It’s unclear when the cargo will arrive or where the containers will find a home.

On Friday, the Washington Examiner found areas around the Los Angeles port filled with containers, spilling out into neighborhoods. Police have issued more than 400 citations in the past few weeks for illegally parking the boxes — some left on the ground and others still on chassis unhooked from the trucks. It’s cheaper just to abandon the load rather than pay storage fees, truckers say.

Cargo containers abandoned on a chassis sit along a busy Los Angeles street. Tori Richards

On one commercial street, containers spilled out of the yard and were parked two deep next to a curb. The street dead-ends 100 feet away and the entire area was filled with containers.

“It’s never been this bad, just during the past year,” said Joe Healey, who works at a nearby seafood supply company.

For trucker Brian, the solution is simple.

“Why not take two ships back full of empties and you would have 40,000 containers going back?” he said. “Do we want to squeeze out mom and pop businesses on both sides of the ocean or do we want to send the containers back to China?”

                22 October 2021              

Montreal – The International Air Transport Association (IATA) urged governments to use the commitments reached at the ICAO High Level Conference on COVID-19 (HLCC) to make real progress towards restoring global air connectivity.

States attending the ICAO HLCC declared their commitment to 14 measures which, if acted upon, would enable airlines to meet the demands of consumers worldwide for a revival of air travel. In particular, two commitments need the most urgent action by governments. These are:

•We commit to taking effective measures to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 and other communicable diseases by international air travel, in particular through the implementation of the ICAO CART guidelines, and encourage the harmonization of Member States’ multilayer risk management strategies to safely restore international connectivity and support the revival of the global economy as a critical step towards achieving our goal to enhance the social, environmental and economic sustainability of aviation, ensuring the interoperability and mutual recognition of, and accessibility to, digital applications, secure transmission and validation of pandemic-related testing, vaccination and recovery certification that protects privacy and personal data.’

•We commit to promoting, to the greatest extent possible, a harmonized and inclusive approach to facilitate safe international air travel, including alleviating or exempting testing and/or quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated or recovered passengers, taking into account the different circumstances of individual States and their national policies, in keeping with WHO’s policy and technical considerations for implementing a risk-based approach to international travel in the context of COVID-191 , and providing exceptions for non-vaccinated passengers. This will enable us to work towards strengthening the confidence of the travelling public and safely rebuilding international civil aviation.’

“Government-imposed restrictions continue to stop a revival of international travel. It remains 70% down on pre-crisis levels. The ICAO HLCC commitments show that governments understand what is needed to re-start global connectivity. The task now is implementation. Some governments have already started. The imminent opening of the US market to vaccinated travelers will be a big step forward. But we cannot let the output of this meeting remain as words on paper. The airline industry, 88 million livelihoods, 3.5% of global GDP and billions of travelers are counting on governments to deliver on the risk-managed reopening of international travel to which they have committed,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General.

CART 3

Earlier this month, ICAO published recommendations that will assist the realization of the HLCC declaration. Known as CART 3 (the Council Aviation Recovery Task Force), the outputs build on previous recommendations from CART as well as the Take-off guidance and Cross-border Manuals.

Key new or updated recommendations to ICAO member states encompass:

•Implementation and recognition of testing, recovery and vaccinations certificates (including digital formats)

•A harmonized multi-layer risk management approach among states to facilitate international travel

•Entry of fully vaccinated and recovered passengers including consideration of alleviating or exempting such individuals from testing and/or quarantine measures

•Access for air crew to vaccination as quickly as possible as recommended by the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE)

CART 3

is a roadmap toward a risk-based, data-driven approach to managing COVID-19. Its recommendations are the building blocks for states to achieve the ambition of the HLCC declaration. After a year-and-a-half of experience with COVID-19 we have the knowledge, data and experience to safely facilitate international travel without border restrictions. All the evidence and recommendations point towards restoring the freedom to travel for those vaccinated. And it is also clear that we have the capability to manage those without access to vaccination using testing,” said Walsh.

IATA Travel Pass

The industry is advanced in its preparation to efficiently manage travel health credentials with the IATA Travel Pass. It is a solution that responds to the HLCC’s recognition that a system will be needed to digitally manage pandemic-related testing, vaccination and recovery certification that protects privacy and personal data.

“Airlines cannot afford a restart that is compromised by paper-based processes for checking travel health credentials. Testing is complete and several airlines are already starting implementation of IATA Travel Pass across their networks. It’s also a ready-made solution for governments to be prepared to efficiently manage their documentation processes as demand ramps-up,” said Walsh.

The shipping crisis has gotten so bad that some companies are chartering air cargo planes for $2 million or more for a single flight

by : Huileng Tan

The shipping crisis is driving some companies to ship their goods via air charters.

A trans-Pacific Boeing 777 air freight charter has hit $2 million – more than double its peak pre-pandemic price.

It could cost even more to ship out of Vietnam, as the manufacturing hub faces multiple disruptions.

The shipping crisis is boosting demand for air cargo, with desperate retailers sending the price of an air freight charter to record levels.

According to Air Charter Service, a trans-Pacific charter on a Boeing 777 costs around $2 million a pop. According to the UK-based air charter service, the pre-pandemic peak price for such a charter was $750,000.

Trade publications American Shipper and Journal of Commerce report similar prices quoted by other industry executives.

It could get even more expensive for companies trying to ship goods out of Vietnam with rates in the $2.5 million to $3 million range, said Edward DeMartini, vice president of air logistics development for North America at Kuehne+Nagel, per American Shipper.

Vietnam is a major manufacturing base for clothes, shoes, and electronics. But a months-long lockdown and recent worker exodus from the country’s business hub have caused operational disruptions on the factory floors and at ports.

Such bottlenecks come amid recovering demand from the US and Europe, stressing global supply chains.

“We’re chartering like mad,” Marc Schlossberg, executive director for air cargo at New York-based Unique Logistics, told American Shipper.

Sportswear giant Nike is one of those using more air freight, reported trade publication Retail Dive.

E-commerce giant Amazon is also reportedly shopping for secondhand cargo jets to avoid major port delays.

“If you had asked me a few years ago whether anyone would take an option of an aircraft positioned in at that price, I would have said it’ll never happen, but some shippers have simply been left with no other options,” said Dan Morgan-Evans, Global Cargo Director at Air Charter Service in a website post earlier this month.