Air Cargo needs to adapt to fend off sea, land transport rivals
AIR cargo faces a smaller market share with greater competition from sea and overland transport, yet airlines fight among themselves "rather than fighting together to get more of the market", says SAS Cargo Group CEO Leif Rasmussen.
Air freight rates were continuing to decline, putting pressure on profitability, "which means we need to find other means to stay in the market," Leif Rasmussen told the Nordic Air Cargo Symposium in Stockholm.
Speed has always been the industry's advantage, but it now needs to find different ways to respond.
Air freight still has little understanding of the end customer and lacks true innovation, he said, Lloyd's Loading List reported.
"There is no shared focus on the end customer, which is maybe because we don't know what they want. The air cargo value chain is fragmented and very bureaucratic," Mr Rasmussen observed.
"If this industry could develop a common promise, it could become very efficient. So we have two choices: we either play the margin game, or we change the game."
Changing the game meant accepting the air cargo sector's interdependence on the other members of the chain; focusing on the end customer; creating simplicity and transparency; and "developing many more industry standards".
