BA targets premium cargo to improve yields

'Selling more space at better rates' ALAN PEAT AFTER A decade of development and the investment of R405.6-million, British Airways World Cargo (BAWC) is poised to make a major strike on the global air cargo express market. It's the airfreight growth area of the future, according to MD Gareth Kirkwood, where yields are better than the increasingly diminishing returns on standard airfreight. The last piece in the jigsaw has just had its official opening – the R202.8-m, 7 200m2 Premia cargo building at London’s Heathrow Airport, an up-to-the-minute facility which will offer BAWC 67% additional capacity for premium freight. It was all triggered by the recognition that premium cargo was the way to go – offering both a more value-added service to users, and giving the airline a better yield on the space it sells. And that’s BAWC’s main marketing urge – its primary purpose, Kirkwood told FTW at the Premia launch in London, is selling more space at better rates. The airline’s market survey of the past decade has identified three premium products which fit in with the demand for faster transit times, while offering better yields. The first it terms “Prioritise” – where users can send freight of any weight across the carrier’s worldwide web of 200 destinations in 80 countries, with each consignment carrying a performance guarantee which offers a 50% refund of freight charges if the airline fails its promise. That’s already underway around the world. Second on the list is a re-entry to transhipment airmail – a product it dropped in 2001, feeling that it wasn’t then capable of offering what was needed. But the new Premia building – which will act as the main global hub for international airmail movement – offers that facility, and is intended to go on-line on September 4, Kirkwood told FTW. Third off the blocks is “Constant Climate” – designed for the transportation of highly temperature-sensitive drugs and vaccines and for high-value food products. This starts to come on stream in September, when the main demand markets in the UK, US, Canada and Europe will be targeted. SA’s entry to the scene is in the second wave in late October – when Asia, Middle East, Australia, South America and other European locations also join the pack.