Direct Nairobi service attracts strong support
THE WORD “trying” readily comes to Jeff Gaitskill in describing the ongoing pugilistic rand vs dollar exchange - every exporter’s nightmare - yet Airline Cargo Resources (ACR) has shrugged aside such adversity and charted a firm course ahead.
“We are looking forward to a successful 2004 as many prospects are in the pipeline. From an airline perspective, a number of airlines are talking to us and I am confident we will bring on board several new customers for cargo handling and even GSA representation,” says Gaitskill, Cape Town branch manager for ACR.
He recalls with some rancour that the rand stood at R12.31 against the dollar in December 2002; a year later it was R6,24 to the dollar.
“That means we had to work twice as hard in 2003 as the previous year but we and our airline clients separated the men from the boys by coming through it.”
The up-down monetary scenario notwithstanding, last October saw Kenya Airways join up with ACR when it inaugurated a new direct Nairobi-Cape Town service utilising a Boeing 737-700 - the only African carrier flying direct to Cape Town.
Gaitskill professes to being amazed at the three-ton cargo lift achieved per Kenya Airways flight. “For an airline of its size, Kenya Airways is proving remarkable and the direct service has been welcomed with open arms by the market.”
Also eliciting a “fantastic response”, leading to a full-time, twice-weekly, scheduled charter service was the launch in November by AV8 Air.Com between Manchester and Cape Town, once again utilising ACR’s services. (It is the only airline to include Dublin on the return leg to Manchester).
One of ACR’s success stories is really its trucking facility, ACR Road Feeder Services, which operates a scheduled 16-hour service between Cape Town and Johannesburg and is contracted by more than 25 airlines as the road carrier of choice. Almost 40 tons a week is moved northbound and 25 tons southbound.
“That really makes us an extension of an airline,” observes Gaitskill. “Domestic airfreight is expensive in South Africa and our road service is certainly the more affordable option.”
ACR Cape Town also takes care of the cargo handling needs of Lufthansa (seven flights a week) and Air Namibia, which operates three times a day including two flights a week with the Boeing
747-400 uplifting 45 tons on average per flight.
