Capacity crunch, embargoes keep animal shipments leashed

[caption id="attachment_85880" align="alignright" width="450"] Photo courtesy of Brussels Airport.[/caption] In January, Air Animal Pet Movers, a Florida-based forwarder that specializes in the transport of pets, received a request to organize the move of a tankful of marine saltwater fish from the 25th floor of a Manhattan high-rise to a London flat. At the time, it seemed like a considerable challenge for veterinarian Dr. Walter Woolf, managing director of Air Animal. With the help of aquarium experts on both sides of the Atlantic, Air Animal was able to move the fish from New York and into their new London home in under 48 hours. “That was almost a piece of cake compared to what we have to do today,” Woolf said. “We used to be able to [plan a pet relocation] within five to seven days.” But today, as a result of the embargoes many airlines have placed on pets and other live cargo, a relocation can take as many as 30 days. One member of the Air Animal sales staff has a backlog of more than 50 moves on hold until restrictions are lifted, Woolf added. For many airfreight forwarders, the main source of frustration isn’t a lack of demand, but an inability to meet demand. According to Martin Atock, managing director of Peden Bloodstock, a Germany-based forwarder that arranges for the transport of horses across the globe, meeting “demand has changed enormously, due to, of course, the limited capacity and widebody aircraft.” Embargo Tight capacity and reduced flight redundancies have led many airlines to place embargoes on live cargo. For instance, Delta on April 1 embargoed all transports under their PET product code, as well as other live cargo transports. United Cargo continues to suspend all pet transport, even those relocating with owners in the military, an exception traditionally made by most airlines. The only flights in the U.S. available to Air Animal, according to Woolf, are through all-cargo operators such as Amerijet, which offers flights to and from the Caribbean, and Aloha Airlines, which operates between Hawaii and California. On top of this, corporate movers — who would normally relocate workers domestically or internationally along with their pets — have delayed moves indefinitely, cutting off a significant source of demand for domestic pet forwarding, Woolf said. Horse forwarders face a problem beyond even the embargo, however. When horses travel, they require a groom in the cargo hold. “You can't fly a horse without an attendant,” Atock said. This presents a problem during a worldwide pandemic as many countries have closed their borders to human travelers. According to Sam Quintelier, head of the Animal Care Center at Brussels Airport (BRU), horse traffic has all but halted through the airport due to concerns about the health of human travelers. When a groom lands at the airport, he said, there are concerns about whether they must be quarantined or even allowed off the aircraft. These complications have led grooms to stop traveling — and with them, the horses. “We saw a huge cargo drop,” Quintelier said. In spite of the challenges, “Horses are still moving. They’re moving all the time,” said Atock. “We just can’t move the volumes.” Coping strategies Because Air Animal concentrates on transporting pets too large to travel in the passenger cabin, cutting the company off from belly capacity slots has left it scrambling for alternatives. The pet mover, therefore, embraced ground transport during the early days of COVID, and still relies heavily on this mode within the United States. Still, it’s a model Air Animal hopes to move away from as soon as possible, Woolf said. For Peden Bloodstock, neither bellyhold capacity nor ground transportation presented a sustainable alternative to air freight. Horses are too large to fit inside the bellyhold of a passenger plane or in the fuselage of a converted passenger aircraft, and require stables inside the aircraft, according to Atock. Only a widebody freighter can accommodate their needs. Likewise, ground transportation often is simply impractical. The time required to transport a horse by air or land from England to Germany, for instance, varies dramatically. “If you fly that horse, it might take an hour and 20 minutes. If you truck that horse, you're looking at two days,” Atock said. Like other companies in the air cargo sphere, Air Animal has forged new partnerships to survive the turbulence of COVID. “International flights have been our saviors,” said Woolf, “With British Airways, with Lufthansa and with Emirates and Qatar Airways, we have reached out to people that we normally use, but we're using [our new partners] more often.” However, the option to quickly establish new partnerships simply didn’t exist for a specialized company like Peden Bloodstock. “You cannot just turn up to a cargo airline that's never flown the horse before [and say] ‘Oh, by the way, we're going to try you now,’” Atock said. “It doesn't work like that at all.” “The experienced airlines and experienced flight crews know they've got horses on board,” he added. “As opposed to just turning left on the taxiway or turning right on the taxiway, they give an indication that we’re about to turn right, and the horse can adjust its balance as we’re taking that corner. It’s the little things like that.” Hope for recovery If pet and live cargo forwarders have stumbled in the wake of these embargoes, there are signs that they may soon be back on their feet and even taking wing. The military, which is still moving people and pets domestically within the United States, has provided a steady stream of demand for Air Animal’s ground-based services, Woolf said. In addition, embargoes are showing signs of loosening in some areas. Delta, for instance, has resumed transport of certain varieties of live cargo on international flights to and from the U.S. earlier this month. And while pets too large to fly in the passenger cabin remain embargoed on domestic American Airlines flights, they are permitted on flights between the U.S. and other nations. At its low point, Woolf said, Air Animal saw movements decline by 36% YoY. Since then, that number has edged toward 30% and continues to shrink. “We've moved over 110 pets in about the last 30-plus days, and that is remarkable considering reduced passenger flights,” said Woolf. “We've been very active.” However, even when restrictions on live cargo are lifted, it could take weeks or months to get animals — and horses in particular — moving again, according to Quintelier. This is due to “all the complexity involved with horses, it's not only the horses, it's the grooms, it's everything.” Atock, however, was optimistic. “As soon as we can get the widebody capacity out there, as soon as we can get the attendants to travel with the horses, we will be fully back up and running again.”

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