Legal intervention needed to gather airfreight stats

The next step towards filling an historical gap in SA’s airfreight market stats is likely to be a legislative one, according to Alwyn Rautenbach, director of cargo for Airlink Cargo and chairman of the Air Cargo Operators Committee (Acoc). Acoc is one of the three bodies, along with the Airports Company of SA (Acsa) and the SA Revenue Service (Sars), busy creating for the first time a monthly statistical analysis of SA’s airfreight market. Devised a year ago, an early step was the choice of Acsa as the compilers of the data – and stats from Acoc and Sars forming the first data base. This was followed by a decision on how the relevant figures could be most easily separated out and recorded under the appropriate title bar. But here the team hit the first snag. Sars data provided all the figures that were needed under the headings cargo category, volume, mass and value. But only for international cargo in-or out of this country. Transit cargo overborder via SA and domestic cargo are not part of the Sars script. “So,” said Rautenbach, “the airlines had to be included as a data source.” But the problem here is that passenger details per flight, because of the airport levy, have to be recorded and submitted to the airports company on a compulsory basis. Not so cargo. No levy, no record. On a trial basis, the airlines were asked to voluntarily submit cargo details to Acsa. But airlines are very wary about releasing information of flights because of the competitive nature of the beast. “So I think we need a more rigid process,” Rautenbach said. “Make it compulsory to report.” And the airlines, he added, would need to submit the cargo manifest for each flight in an electronic format. This would supply all the stats necessary to finalise the compilation of the data base. “Immediately available and on-line,” Rautenbach said. INSERT & CAPTION Make it compulsory to report. – Alwyn Rautenbach