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Ashwini Phadnis

Emirates SkyCargo... Going places in India.

EMIRATES SkyCargo of the Dubai-based Emirates Airline proposes to enhance its presence in India. As a first step, the airline participated for the first time in the Transport India, a major international fair on transport and logistics that recently concluded in Delhi.

Emirates SkyCargo recorded significant growth in cargo transportation (in tonnage terms) from India in the first quarter of the year compared to the corresponding previous period. "We see tremendous potential in India's air cargo market," said Mr Prakash Nair, Emirates Cargo Marketing Manager, pointing out that Emirates SkyCargo successfully met the challenge thrown up by one of the toughest year ever facing the global airline industry and earned revenue of over one billion dirhams for the second year in succession. In India, SkyCargo posted a whopping 302 per cent growth in tonnage from Hyderabad in the first quarter of this year over the corresponding previous period. The growth in Chennai was 53 per cent and in Mumbai 27 per cent. "Buoyed by the growth, SkyCargo plans to gradually enhance its presence in different parts of the domestic market," Mr Nair said. General Sales Agents (GSAs) have been appointed to tap the Indian market more effectively to generate more cargo business. "The idea is to feed our existing network with additional businesses to be generated by the GSAs," airline sources said. SkyCargo GSAs have been appointed in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Kochi, Coimbatore, Thiruvananthapuram and Vadodara.

Emirates Airline now operates out of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad with the flights carrying both passengers and cargo.

The airline is hoping that the change in philosophy from `delivery as promised to delivery as required' will help the Indian customer also choose the airline for transporting their goods.

Emirates Airline's another innovation is Skychain, which is a computerised communication network to provide up-to-date information to the customers. The facility, it was pointed out, would help cargo customers check flight schedules, track and trace shipments, check space availability in any of the Emirates flights, make bookings on-line in real time and even print bar code labels using the Internet or e-mail.

Skychain's booking system, it is claimed, marks a departure from industry practice by doing away with the airway bill number; instead, there would be the job reference number (JRN).

Using the JRN, a booking record could be started by anyone, anywhere, anytime up to 250 days ahead of transportation.From India, almost 60 per cent of the cargo carried by SkyCargo is for markets in West Asia while destinations in Europe account for the balance 40 per cent. The destinations SkyCargo connects in West Asia include Kuwait, Riyadh, Jeddah, Muscat, Bahrain and in Europe, London, Manchester, Frankfurt, Munich, Milan and Rome.

The Indian cargo business accounts for around 10 per cent of total revenue generation of SkyCargo; however, the airline sources were hopeful that the figure would rise progressively in the coming days.

Meanwhile, the SkyCargo is to start a once-a-week freighter service between Dubai and Shanghai from September 15 using a Boeing 747-400 freighter with 120-tonne capacity.

"The weekly flight, on Sundays, will be the first-ever direct airlink between Dubai and mainland China and will give shippers and freight forwarders at both ends fast and convenient connections to each other's markets," the sources observed adding that Shanghai would be the second cargo-only service of Emirates, after Amsterdam.

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