ACE Awards 2019: Making customers feel 'special'

One of the more popular services being offered in logistics today is specialization – the ability to provide personal service for unusual goods, such as perishables, dangerous goods, pharmaceuticals, animals and oversized cargo.

For the third consecutive year, Air Cargo World asked ACE survey respondents about the top performers in these niche categories. For the past two years, Lufthansa Cargo had ruled the carrier category, but this year, Russia’s AirBridgeCargo Airlines stole the spotlight, earning a 110-point score.

For airports, the big winner, once again, was Ecuador’s Quito Mariscal Sucre (UIO), which was a surprise upstart in the 2018 Awards, but now can no longer be called a dark horse, earning a 122-point score – just one index point behind last year’s total for specialty cargo, but still the highest point total for any subcategory in 2019. One of UIO’s largest advantages, said Alisson Larrea, manager of corporate affairs and marketing, is that UIO is the only greenfield airport in the region. “This means that we have modern and new facilities, specifically designed and constructed to specification,” she said, which aid in handling the large volumes of flowers in the region.

Other notable specialty-cargo airports in the regional categories (see chart below) included North America’s gateway to Latin America and pharma specialist, Miami International (MIA) with 109 points; the two-time Asian winner, Singapore (SIN), with 117 points; and a two-way tie for Dubai (DXB) and Luxembourg (LUX) airports, both knotted at 110 points apiece.