In the face of supply chain disruptions caused by conflicts, disasters, and pandemics, TIACA’s director general Glyn Hughes says the air cargo industry must be flexible and forge strong partnerships.

Partnerships are also key in this context, as supply chain resilience and flexibility are only as strong as the weakest link. Business partners should have shared or, at least, open book contingency planning and disruption management processes.

Allied to effective partnerships is effective digitalised data integration and communication plans. The sooner the network can be made aware of a disruption, the sooner mitigation plans can be enacted. By utilising AI and other technology-based tools, the speed or reaction time can be accelerated, and disruption management options can be developed and evaluated.

This should also extend to customer interactions as customers need to realise that the earlier they can make their supply chain partners aware of potential disruptions the sooner solutions can be sourced. Pre-emptive and proactive solutions will always be more effective than reactive solutions.

The impact of production disruption will require flexible access to capacity, whether that is charters or accessing network operations. This is most evident when maritime based supply chains are restricted as we saw during periods of long shoreman strikes or when the Suez Canal was blocked, or what we are seeing now with drought conditions impacting the Panama Canal with container ship traffic slowed down and ship capacity reduced.

Air space restrictions result in significant disruption to flight operations. For example, what we are experiencing with Russian airspace remaining closed to many foreign carriers is adding in some cases up to four hours to a Europe/Asia flight. The impact of this is multi‑fold: there are increases in fuel burn and cost as well as the environmental impact and crew costs; air craft maintenance schedule accelerates; and hours of utilisation increase unnecessarily. Sometimes you now need intermediary stopping points and additional crew changes. Passenger flight disruptions not only negatively impact passenger satisfaction, but it also impacts cargo payload as increased amounts of fuel are needed.

And of course, the competitive landscape is distorted as not all carriers are affected. Only carriers registered to states that have implemented sanctions are impacted. So, the carriers who still can access the airspace benefit from a cheaper and more efficient operating environment.

What can we expect from a disruption perspective with the current situation in the Middle East?

Many international operations to/from Tel Aviv have been suspended at the time of writing this article and, with tensions expected to escalate, we can anticipate further suspensions. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has issued a Conflict Zone Information Bulletin (CZIB) for the airspace of Israel (reference, easa.europa.eu).

The CZIB has been issued based on information currently available to EASA and the European Commission in order to share information which is considered necessary to ensure the safety of flights over zones of interest.

Air operators are recommended to ensure that a robust risk assessment is in place together with a high level of contingency planning for their operations and to be ready for short notice instructions from the Israeli authorities.

This will disrupt passenger operations and consequently cargo operations will also be impacted. Of course, any conflict escalation will further impact transport links. Flight restrictions will impact humanitarian aid as well as vital non-military goods which are needed by citizens in the impacted area. So, we can expect to see increases in demands for charter operations.

We have already seen that global manufacturers who rely on Israeli produced components are suffering shortages which will necessitate re‑sourcing and further supply chain disruption.

As to the broader area avoidance, it will impact Middle East to EU and US flight paths and some Europe/Asia flight paths, but not to the same extent as we saw with the closure of Russian airspace. The additional flight times will not be significant enough to require crew considerations such as repositioning and mid-journey crew stops.

To conclude

It is an unfortunate truth that disruption will be an ever-present aspect of the air cargo industry; organisations that have flexible and agile corporate DNA will be those best positioned to respond positively when faced with volatile and uncertain operating scenarios.

This feature was first published in Air Cargo Management – November/December 2023. To read the magazine in full, click here.