Air freight, and in particular the combined air-sea transport approach, is growing steadily. With the health crisis and the e-commerce boom, air freight has been showing constant growth for many months now.
Guaranteeing excellent transit times, air freight combines speed, reliability and security, which are essential assets for all players in international trade.
On a global level, air transport has grown by almost 19% in 2021 compared to 2020.
Driven by steadily increasing e-commerce volumes, the sector must now face two external factors: the Chinese confinements and the war in Ukraine. According to IATA, global air freight demand has started to decline since March 2022. The air transport sector is now back to pre-pandemic levels.
CERL’s logistics experts share their know-how and show you the advantages of air transport for your express shipments and oversized goods.
What are the advantages of air freight for your goods?
Air transport can be particularly recommended for shipping bulky, precious, fragile or dangerous products. It is a complementary offer to maritime transport for the transportation of goods.
It is the preferred solution for shipments requiring short delivery times over long distances. Air transport guarantees an excellent transit time and thus reduces the problems of supply chain disruptions.
In the context of a short time-to-market, the transport of goods by air can be the only possible solution to be able to deliver your goods in time.
The regularity of the flights also makes it possible to plan the delivery times in order to optimize them. Finally, air transport is considered to be one of the safest ways to ship goods.
The most suitable goods for air transport
Air freight is the preferred solution for the transportation of certain products and goods:
- Products with a limited shelf life: perishable goods (fruit and vegetables, seafood, fresh fruit, vaccines, etc.).
- Fragile products: laboratory instruments, medical equipment, electronic equipment and household appliances.
- Dangerous goods such as nuclear, weapons or laboratory products.
- Goods with high economic value such as works of art, confidential documents, precious metals, cars, jewelry, fashion collections.
- Oversized goods, thanks to the chartering of a cargo plane you will be able to transport goods of any size.
Air freight with CERL
Do you need to plan a particular freight shipment? Our teams will advise you on the best solution to transport your goods door-to-door, to their destination, with the utmost care and at the best price.
CERL will assist you in organizing your cargo flows with a complete mastery of chartering, groupage, courier operations and all customs formalities associated with air transport.
Mandatory documents for air transport
In order to manage your air shipments, various procedures and documents are essential to the smooth running of a shipment.
CERL is an Authorized Agent and AEO certified, we can manage all these procedures:
- The Air Waybill: A contract of carriage that provides detailed information on the shipment and allows for tracking.
- Commercial Invoice: Document that defines the exact value of the goods and determines the amount of taxes and duties. It is used as proof at the borders.
- Packing list: Document that lists the inventory of the shipment.
- Customs clearance authorization: Document that allows us to present one or more customs declarations.
The different ways of shipping air freight
There are three types of aircraft that can transport your goods:
- Cargo planes: their flights are exclusively dedicated to the transport of material or goods. They can be private or shared depending on the demand. They are particularly adapted to oversized goods.
- Passenger aircraft: airliners carry passengers but their holds can also accommodate cargo.
- Combi-aircraft: these aircraft are shared between passenger and freight transport.
For the transport in the hold, two solutions are available. Your goods can be transported with the courier system, each of your parcels is then sent with a single transport title.
You can also use groupage to optimize your shipments. In air consolidation, different shippers share an air container or a loading unit.
Zoom: Aircraft Chartering
Contrary to popular belief, chartering a cargo aircraft can be a useful and competitive alternative for the transportation of oversized goods.
Transportation by sea can have some disadvantages in terms of time, integrity of the goods or accessibility. Aircraft chartering is then the ideal solution to meet a personalized need.
This solution adapts to the particularities of the customer’s request in terms of deadlines and itineraries. The charter of a cargo aircraft also allows the transport (under certain conditions) of dangerous goods or regulated products prohibited in passenger flights.
CERL’s experts have developed a proven methodology that allows us to obtain a 100% success rate on the aircraft charter projects entrusted to us.
We manage for you the choice of the right aircraft size, the most suitable airports and we study with meticulousness the pre and post routing solutions.
