Maintaining the momentum established during the pandemic and to continue building resilience post-COVID, Air cargo sector must meet customers’ expectations for the highest standards of sustainability. Halit Tuncer, Cargo Director, South Asia, Turkish Cargo, shares the details:
Gurpreet Matharu
Q1. Kindly elaborate on the expansion plans of Turkish cargo in India.
India is an important market for us as we are already flying six stations with freighters all over and with daily passenger flights into Delhi/Mumbai. We have seen a lot of potential to bring in more fleet to cater to the Indian market globally in our massive network. We do intend to include more cities in our network.
Q2. Post-Covid, what is your perception of air cargo globally? How have the dynamics changed?
Post-Covid, Air cargo has been a lifeline for society, delivering critical medical supplies and vaccines across the globe and keeping international supply chains open. And for many airlines, cargo became a vital source of revenue when passengers were grounded. And we need to maintain the momentum established during the crisis and continue building resilience post-COVID. Sustainability is our industry’s card to grow. We need to meet customers’ expectations for the highest standards of sustainability.
The pandemic accelerated digitalisation as contactless processes were introduced to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. We must meet the needs of the customer and improve operational efficiency. As we have noticed huge growth in cross border e-commerce and special handling items like time and temperature sensitive payloads.
Q3. Comparing pre-covid and post- covid times, what is the increase in tonnage carried?
Turkish Cargo carried 1.87 million tonnes of cargo in 2021, an increase of 22% from 2019.
Q4. Recently, a lot of impetus has been given to the cargo sector in the 2022- 23 Budget. How do you see it helping the air cargo and what more is expected from the government to further streamline the sector?
The need of the hour has been to speed up cargo movement and improve the logistic network. The data exchange among all mode operators is to be brought onto a unified logistic interface platform designed for application programming interfaces. This will provide for the efficient movement of goods, reducing logistics costs and time spent on moving freight.
Supporting just-in-time inventory management and eliminating tedious documentation. This will provide real-time information and increase international competitiveness.
Improvement in India’s logistics infrastructure and warehousing sector; also increasing penetration of digitalization; development of multimodal logistics parks, roads, cargo terminals etc./ better connectivity initiatives such as inland waterways and railways in tandem with the freight distribution ecosystem.
