Airlink Cargo had recorded a busy first week of strong demand from South African domestic freight interests after resuming flights on Monday, said the company’s executive manager of the cargo division, Alwyn Rautenbach.
“The bulk of our staff are still on unpaid leave but we managed to successfully answer the call of companies with air cargo since we started flights between Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.”
However, had other cities been part of the country’s risk-adjusted strategy to re-open the economy, the volumes of freight flown between the country’s metropoles could be much higher.
“We could probably be doing even better than we are at the moment but our network is hampered. We cannot fly overseas and we can’t fly over-border.
“Another problem is the situation on the ground. Transporting goods within the country is a problem and our borders are heavily bottlenecked with trucks building up at crossings into neighbouring countries.”
According to Rautenbach it would be immensely helpful to the local economy if the entire country was reopened.
“If we could open up the entire domestic market and not just focus on three cities but others too, we could see much stronger economic recovery across the board.
It would also help us to re-establish a freight network servicing couriers and other concerns.”
Market resilience and eagerness to continue trading under extreme adverse conditions had already been evident in April when the country entered the Covid-19 lockdown, Rautenbach said.
“There was a lively market for imports into southern Africa in April. PPE goods were coming in in large quantities and airlines even used passenger aircraft to fly in box cargo loaded on seats and in aisles.”
Year-on-year market data from April will probably show that 2020 was a better year for air freight volumes than 2019.
“What we now need is to build on the momentum created with the loosening of lockdown restrictions since we moved from alert level four to three.
"We know what needs to be done to safeguard people against the virus, and passenger flights not just for South Africa but southern Africa should be reinstated.
“At the moment we’re only allowed to fly business passengers between Jo’burg, Cape Town and Durban. It’s not really feasible.”