Ready for take-off

The world air-freight industry is expected to more than triple in size in the next 20 years. Average annual growth will be around 6.7 per cent - which outpaces that in passenger transport, says Professor Mohammed Zairi, head of the European Centre for Total Quality Management at the Management Centre, in a study on benchmarking in the industry.

Intra-Asian air-freight growth is expected to be the fastest in the world at 9 per cent a year. But international express traffic will also continue to expand rapidly, growing by up to 40 per cent by 2018.

Air cargo accounts for around 16 per cent of the revenue of passenger airlines and Professor Zairi highlights two important reasons for the growth in air cargo - the shorter lifecycle of products such as cellular telephones, and the general trend toward global markets which has been spurred on by the Internet.

He said: "Globalisation of sourcing, production and sales is revolutionising the requirements for transport providers. Customers are reducing batch sizes and demanding ever-shortening transport times. Global logistics systems with low and reliable transport times are needed." His study focused on Cargolux, KLM, British Airways, Lufthansa, Emirates, Singapore Airlines, Malaysian Airlines and Cathay Pacific. Lufthansa, which came out top in terms of freight-tonnes-kilometres, was praised for its commitment to total quality, customer focus, and process-oriented culture.

Professor Zairi praised British Airways for its state-of-the-art cargo centre, courier service, total-quality culture and integrated performance-measurement system. Malaysian Airlines' information technology systems, work planning and control, and automation of materials handling and control won plaudits. The study was sponsored by Saudi Arabian Airlines' cargo division which also acted as the pilot for the study.

[Next] [Prev]

University - Public Relations - Annual Reports - 2000 Contents - Research

University of Bradford, Bradford, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom

Content last updated 17 May 2000
HTML last changed 12 July 2000