Deadlines and deviations: Maximizing, managing and navigating cargo capacity

A loadmaster at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS) is making final adjustments to the load plan for an upcoming 747F flight to Hong Kong. Like all flights that have been traveling along the route for the past year, the flight is booked solid with all 30 pallet positions accounted for. The agent’s job would be a straightforward weight-based balancing act were it not for the fact that the airline realized — just hours before the flight’s scheduled departure — that two pallets had been overbuilt and were larger than the forwarder initially declared. Far from an isolated incident, this scene plays out daily at cargo hubs around the world. “Almost every day, a fully built, 10-foot pallet is delivered to us while it was not declared on the air waybill [AWB], and this is the accumulation of many different deviations,” Irwin Budding, project manager at Amsterdam-based KLM Cargo, told Air Cargo World . “Now, imagine we have a lot of flights going everywhere, but just one pallet extra just eight hours before departure can be a constraint to deliver a good flight plan and to have all the customers satisfied with what we promised them, especially when flights are fully booked.” Although seemingly small, a buildup of deviations leads to a much larger strain, especially when capacity is in such short supply, and airlines are often faced with hard and difficult choices. “Do we cut those shipments and only [transport] what was reserved or what’s declared on the air bill? Or do we ship the full shipment and do we cut another shipment?” asked KLM's Budding. When flights are full every day, there’s a knock-on effect that is difficult to remedy, and cargo carriers are forced to re-evaluate loading processes, taking both time and manpower, which may be in short supply for carriers due to takeoff deadlines. While the pallets and ULDs that carry the loads are standardized and uniform in shape, most aircraft were not designed to optimize cargo, especially now that the variety of equipment used has diversified as carriers utilize passenger aircraft for cargo-only missions. In 2017, revenue optimization company Wiremind launched SkyPallet, a platform that combats these problems by digitalizing the flight planning process to help with capacity control. “It’s not like everything is just a compartment full of air. You have pallets of frozen salmon [that] you cannot load next to live animals, you have legal restrictions over lithium batteries, dangerous goods, [and] all these things add up and make [cargo] a difficult job,” Nathanael de Tarade, chief commercial officer of Wiremind, told Air Cargo World . “And, of course, you have the aircraft itself. The shape of the lower deck looks like [the letter] U, and the main deck is sort of an inverted J.” Capacity constraints and navigating the space on converted passenger freighters have been the basis for ingenuity within the airfreight industry in order to encourage more precise calculations and proactive solutions when it comes to capacity utilization. “There’s really a gap between theory and practical reality in cargo because, no matter how great your plan is, if the cargo you’re supposed to have is not the one you really have, then you have an issue,” said de Tarade. Reducing deviations The saga of the overbuilt pallet is especially problematic in today’s capacity-strapped market, and KLM Cargo is working with startup Cargometer, a freight-dimensioning company with camera-based volumetric scanners, to catch volumetric deviations upon warehouse arrival. Although stationary volume scanners had previously existed, they were often conceived as a nuisance since handlers often had to go out of their way to pass through the scanner, and it was nearly impossible to scan everything. Dynamic volume scanners, like the Cargometer, allow for a seamless scanning process that does not interfere or hamper daily operations. KLM Cargo installed the system on one door at its AMS export cargo facility in 2019. Forklifts transport cargo from docked trucks passing through the scanner on their way into the warehouse, generating volume measurements that detect deviations early on. Currently, KLM Cargo is considering adding volume scanners to five additional doors at its warehouse in Amsterdam, and is also evaluating a more comprehensive IT integration with Cargometer, said Budding. Long term, a more comprehensive integration between KLM Cargo’s sales systems and the volume scanners would make sure that the weight stated on the AWB matches the actual weight of the shipment to avoid any capacity-related setbacks prior to takeoff. “The best way to deal with [deviations] is to prevent it from happening [and] this volume scanner, making real measurements of water volume, enables us to prevent this,” said Budding. Maximizing capacity While eliminating deviations in shipment measurements is only one part of the equation, equally important is the accurate measure of an aircraft’s capacity. CLIVE Data Services, a company that provides industry insight and market analysis, introduced a metric called the dynamic load factor. Where utilized capacity on aircraft was previously based on weight, the dynamic load factor considers both weight and volume. “If we go back, let’s say 25 years, if a plane was full on weight, it was also maybe close to full on volume, so [weight and volume] were in sync,” Niall van de Wouw, managing director at CLIVE Data Services, told Air Cargo World . “But in the last 25 years, planes have become stronger in the sense that they can lift more weight per standard unit of volume, and the goods that were moving — the density of those goods — have been declining.” “So, what we’ve seen is that a plane could be completely full on volume, so you could not have put one [more] single package on the plane, but theoretically, you could still move twice as much in weight,” said van de Wouw. Consequently, measuring how full planes really are considers how much cargo was loaded and how much cargo could have been loaded. The ability to more accurately analyze load factors has helped put into perspective how much space is being utilized on aircraft, sparking the need for technology that helps to fully optimize flight plans by managing capacity. This technology is especially needed as carriers have reconfigured passenger cabins and storage areas for cargo transport to combat the capacity crunch throughout the pandemic, creating a new complicating factor when it comes to utilizing space. Optimizing capacity on passenger cabin areas of reconfigured aircraft can be tricky, especially without any industry standards. Whether a carrier has decided to utilize overhead bins or completely remove all passenger seats, airlines are looking to further optimize those spaces, not only for operational efficiency but also to increase revenue during these turbulent times. Wiremind has recently developed an add-on module for its SkyPallet product that allows users to utilize other storage areas on passenger aircraft, including business and economy class seats and hallways. The module specifically helps optimize the available space by handling the limitations of passenger freighters, like weight or size, according to de Tarade. However, optimization is not necessarily solving a problem with a single perfect solution, said de Tarade. For example, when a customer has shipments that can only go on the main deck, it means the carrier would want to spare main-deck capacity, said de Tarade. However, putting all other shipments onto the lower deck isn’t necessarily the only answer, and a carrier may want to see other optimization options, such as merging shipments into containers. “You have to know exactly how much [space] you have for sale, how much is left, whether you can accept the shipment, and even that simple process is not always, to me, completely efficient in all aspects,” said de Tarade. “You need the staff, but also the tools to do that, and optimization sometimes [is] just constant work of making small, frequent decisions that are good.” Minimizing the number of small decisions with targeted technology improvements, whether it be volume-scanning cameras or optimization systems, can make day-to-day loading operations look a lot different.

Deadlines and deviations: Maximizing, managing and navigating cargo capacity

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