From the Cockpit with Alaska Air Cargo’s Drouhard

Alaska Airlines’ Adam Drouhard this year assumed leadership of the airline’s cargo division after a tenure at Alaska Air Cargo that began in 2007. Drouhard was appointed to the role of managing director of cargo for the airline at a time when demand for freighter lift was booming, and while an “irregularity” in the rigid barrier system installed on some Israel Aerospace Industries-converted freighters — including Alaska’s trio of 737-700BDSFs — required workarounds and repairs. Cargo Facts caught up with Drouhard to discuss returning the freighter fleet to full-capacity, and how Alaska Air Cargo is looking ahead to future growth opportunities. Cargo Facts : What are some of your goals for the first year in your new role? AD : The airline has a 2025 plan that will slowly start rolling out here over the coming months. We’re seeing how cargo fits into that and making sure we’re being a maximizer, optimizer for the company, but also paving the path forward. Really, we’re looking at beyond five years. We’re looking at probably ten years’ scope of just getting a really big roadmap laid out there, everything between from cargo fleet needs to making sure we have a path forward for those freighters. What is the fleet mix going to look like? And then we’ll also look at innovation. Again, we’ll probably be looking at the idea of bringing on different systems over the next year or two, and really just looking at how we can create a better hassle-free environment for our customers. CF: Your freighter operations have returned to full capacity since those repairs have been made. So how have those been going since you’ve gotten the freighters back to full service? AD : A lot of it started back in late 2019, and so the bulk of 2020 was the idea of path repairing. We actually got out of the gate early in 2020, with some different solutions to kind of work in the time while they were getting fixed. So once that was there, we actually had them almost to full steam for much of 2020. But it wasn’t until April of this year that we had the last one fixed. Since then, it’s been back to business as usual for our planes — getting back to running on time, and getting back into communities with more time schedules. And we’ve actually seen our business grow just as a result of that as well. CF : What were some of the ways of mitigating those reduced operations that you mentioned? AD : One of the big ways we did it was we were able to develop a program for strapping ULDs to different anchor points to the floor so that we were able to actually get tied in with them, really just to help mitigate the situation. It really allowed us to get back to close to full strength capacity wise. It was a little bit of a hindrance just on timeline scales and keeping planes busy, because we had to slow the operation down a little bit during that time. But it was a way to, just in a high-demand environment, make sure we were keeping planes full. Where we’re at now is being able to get the speed of our operation back up and going to where we’re able to squeeze in a few more flights and really start to expand back out again. CF : Are freighter operations within the lower 48 still a possibility or something that you’re thinking about, now that we’re seeing increased freighter utilization? AD : It’s interesting, just watching the industry overall and the way that it's growing. You’re seeing different operators that didn’t have freighters before: Sun Country kind of came out of the pandemic as a new operator. You’re seeing United with amazing earnings just from what they’re doing with their passenger network, deploying it as a freighter fleet. I think the industry is still kind of finding itself a little bit and Amazon, UPS and FedEx are trying to adapt to that. So we’re really watching that closely to see what opportunities are out there. There’s potential down the road for us to do something different, I would say probably where we’re looking for the next year or two, for sure, is Alaska; we know the state definitely continues to hold a lot of potential for us for growth. And, again, just finding ways to better serve the state. So it’s really going to be a combination of making sure we’re being very optimistic and weighing up, basically, where the best opportunities are and where the best needs are for the industry right now. Like I said, we still see a lot of strength in the state of Alaska. So we’ll continue to work on our growth plans there. But yes, it’s a good point for the lower 48. It’s something we’re watching really closely. And, as we talked about, the idea of growth in a ten-year plan for cargo — how does that type of network expansion fit in? CF : Are you considering any changes or additions to your freighter fleet? Maybe within Alaska? AD: It’s on the table for us as we review and just looking at the current conversion options out there today, and what else could be done coming down the road. Today, our passenger network for the state of Alaska really resides between we our -700s, -800s and -900s and a fair complement of E175s that we’ve deployed in the market this last year also. Any platforms out there where we can really grab synergies off of the company are always good. The nice thing about Boeing [aircraft] for us, is it’s something we’re really well-versed in. So whether it’s a -700, -800 or -900 up there for us, it really just fits in normally. It’s just the idea of making sure we find capacity that really matches the demand environment of it. So I think the -700 does that really well up there. The -800 provides some interesting opportunities with it as well. So it’s really what we’re going through right now, just seeing how this fits in with overall fleet plans for the company. This story originally appeared in the September 2021 issue of Cargo Facts . Cargo Facts Symposium, taking place LIVE October 25-27 at the Wynn Las Vegas, is the essential event for stakeholders in the air cargo industry. Learn more and register at www.cargofactssymposium.com .

From the Cockpit with Alaska Air Cargo’s Drouhard

Alaska Airlines cargo head on growth potential

China trade surges to new records on strong US, EU demand

Kerry Logistics commences own-controlled network with trans-Pacific flight

Kerry Logistics commences own-controlled network with trans-Pacific flight

Cargo Facts Free Newsletters

Cargo Facts Connect Podcast

Follow Us

Welcome Back!

Retrieve your password