Cargo Chat: Alaska Air Cargo’s Adam Drouhard on growth potential

Alongside the general upheaval in aviation and logistics since early 2020, the past year and a half has been something of a game of musical chairs at many cargo airlines, with leadership shuffling between major cargo carriers and passenger airlines. Alaska Air Cargo’s Adam Drouhard this year assumed leadership of the airline’s cargo division after a tenure at Alaska Air Cargo that began in 2007. [caption id="attachment_96622" align="alignright" width="450"] Adam Drouhard, Managing Director, Alaska Air Cargo. Photo by Daniel Berman, courtesy of Alaska Airlines.[/caption] Drouhard stepped into the lead cargo role at Alaska as passenger service still lagged pre-pandemic levels and with the airline’s three 737-700 converted freighters undergoing repairs . Since then, repairs have been completed and the passenger network is slowly returning. As the industry returns to looking toward future goals rather than responding to the crisis day by day, Air Cargo World spoke with Drouhard about his plans for his new role and the airline’s cargo strategies for the years ahead. ACW: Now that you are leading Alaska’s cargo division, what are some of your goals for the first year in your new role? Adam Drouhard: A lot of the new things we're doing right now go all the way up to our executive committee. We’re talking about building a path forward for our division in the cargo group here. We’re looking at the state of Alaska, looking at our core markets, talking about where the airlines are looking to go. The airline has a 2025 plan that will slowly start rolling out over the coming months, just seeing how cargo fits in 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, at probably a 10-year scope of just getting a big roadmap laid out there. Everything from cargo fleet needs — we have three 737-700 freighters today and are making sure we have a path forward for those. The idea is, what is the fleet mix going to look like and the size of that fleet? Then just looking at innovation. Again, we'll probably be looking at the idea of bringing on different systems over the next year or two. And just looking at how we can create a better, hassle-free environment for our customers and making sure we always kind of do the right thing, too. I mean, first and foremost, we know the staffing environment is tough right now. We want to make sure we're not overworking or burning people out. So we've got to find the right balance for everyone. ACW: Alaska Air Cargo added self-service kiosks a couple of years ago. How has the technology that you have put in place served you since? What are some areas that you're looking to develop along those lines going forward? AD: The self-service was really our first step into mobile. To be frank, I know we're probably a little bit behind on that scope, so for us it's really catching up in that environment. Especially with a pandemic, things are going hands-free, touch-free in the interaction pieces with customers, and the idea of much more self-service is really going to be the focus going forward. The pandemic really brought some things to light. Some of these things, hopefully, calm down a bit, but you never know. In reality too, it's just the emphasis on hassle-free, so these are investment areas we need to have. The idea of further enhanced scanning, more mobile devices, the ability for tracking and tracing for our customers, just really the ability for us to capture much more cargo transit data, and then also just enable our customers to have that in their hands, is really going to be a focus. ACW: Alaska has also previously said that its 737-700 freighters are particularly well-suited for operations within Alaska. Are you considering any changes or additions to your freighter fleet? AD: Yeah, it's on the table for us as we review [our fleet], just looking at the current conversion options out there today, and what else could be coming on down the road. Today, our passenger network for the state of Alaska really resides between our 737-700s, 737-800s, and we actually operate the 737-900 in there as well, and a fair complement of Embraer 175s that we've deployed in the market this last year also. Any platforms out there where we can really grab synergies with the company are always good. The nice thing about Boeing, for us, it's something we're well-versed in. If it's a -700, -800 or -900 up there for us, it just fits in normally. It's the idea of making sure we find capacity that really matches the demand environment. The 737-700 does that really well up there, and the -800 provides some interesting opportunities as well. So it's really what we're going through right now, just asking how does this fit in with overall fleet plans for the company? This is the trajectory, and we can kind of do both.

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