Letter from the Cargo Facts Chairman

Dear Community Member,

Since its launch in 1995, the Cargo Facts Symposium has singularly brought together the disparate members of the global airfreight and freighter aircraft community, not just to engage in business discussions but because Cargo Facts attendees are a family. Some come back year after year, as much to check in on friends as to pursue business partnerships and transactions.

However, COVID-19 prevents that from happening this year.

Rather than put our attendees at risk, we have made the difficult decision to present the 26^th annual Cargo Facts Symposium as a virtual experience, rather than as a live gathering in San Diego. This is a painful decision to be sure, especially since we know so many of our cherished attendees were looking forward to finally “getting out” to attend the Symposium.

Although the coronavirus pandemic prevents us from physically meeting to solve today’s challenges, the 2020 Cargo Facts Symposium Virtual Experience will allow us to safely collaborate to discover new ideas and solutions for a market and industry in great flux.

This virtual event offers benefits that I maintain will be even more profound than a live conference. When we held Cargo Facts Asia as a virtual event in April, feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive. This will be even more true for the Cargo Facts Symposium, as we have improved our events technology. Our new virtual event platform allows us to deliver more value to you, with dynamic matchmaking and real-time data insights on market trends. We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time thinking through the virtual event experience and technology, and I know the value will be there for every attendee, most notably in the technology’s ability to facilitate digital networking.

There is no shortage of challenges facing the market, including a global economy in freefall, the uncertainty surrounding the passenger-freighter boom, a looming U.S.-China cold war, the collapse of the passenger aviation market, and new freighter platforms coming on line, to name but a few. Just getting a handle on the longer-term implications of the coronavirus pandemic remains an open challenge to us all. What is clear is this: The ongoing pandemic has managed to destabilize most of the global aviation market, even as disrupted supply chains have boosted airfreight rates to unprecedented highs.

Making sense of dramatic trend lines is what we do at Cargo Facts, and we will certainly do so at the virtual Symposium. Each session at the Symposium has been designed to result in ideas you can put into action — from how to think long term about pax freighters to discerning the pandemic’s implications for feedstock and global trade, to an assessment of the sustainability of COVID-driven e-commerce gains. Cargo Facts is always privileged to host an exceptional speaker faculty, and this year we will inspire them to delve deeply into the pandemic’s effects and implications.

In this time of great uncertainty, I urge you to join us for the virtual Cargo Facts Symposium to sort through the current challenges facing the industry and reconnect with your industry friends and associates. Your Cargo Facts family awaits you.

Sincerely yours,