BA's dedicated freighter services from Chennai, Mumbai

By T. S. Shankar

CHENNAI, AUG. 15. British Airways (BA) World Cargo will be introducing dedicated freighters out of Chennai and Mumbai to London within a month to cater to the growing needs of the South Indian trade market.

Detailing the expansion plans of the Indian operations of the BA World Cargo, its Vice-President for Africa, Middle East, and South Asia, Mr.Tony Nothman, said in an interview to The Hindu here on Tuesday that the European carrier began its exclusive freighter operations to Chennai last year which was a joint operation together with Mumbai.

Mr. Nothman and Mr. Kamal Kikani, Area Sales Manager (Central and South India) of BA World Cargo explained that the proposed new direct freighter service out of Chennai to London would depart on Saturdays and out of Mumbai on Fridays. ``We also have transit freighters to New Delhi which arrive from Hong Kong five times a week'', Mr. Kikani added.

Stating that BA has been classified as the fifth largest cargo carrier, Mr. Nothman noted that the European carrier carried over 8.90 lakh tonnes, out of which 70 per cent of the cargo shipped around the globe are handled at the London Heathrow airport at one point of its journey.

``We now have crossed the corner stone of our business which is the brand new facility, Ascentis, a 250 million pound world cargo centre at the London Heathrow airport. And this state-of-the-art facility is designed to handle eight lakh tonnes of cargo annually. ''It has the capacity to move up to a million tonnes a year``, Mr.Nothman added.

''We have in our network over 200 stations. So that makes up for the airline - that we have the right facility in London and we have got the matching network and the kind of worldclass service. We will able to provide the worldclass facilities thereby one could ship anything from anywhere around the globe. And BA World Cargo has the capability to deliver the desired results``, Mr. Nothman said.

Primarily transporting the cargo by using the belly hold capacity of the passenger aircraft (BA now operates a total of 19 flights between India and the U.K. covering Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai), Mr. Nothman said that apart from the scheduled passenger flights, the airline had a mixture of long-haul freighters of 747-400s, the Boeing-777s and the long-range Boeing 767s. ''At present, we are on a fleet rationalisation programme which would allow us to take advantage of more efficient aircraft. And the 777s offer more carrying capacity than the 747- 400s. And following the recent refurbishment programme, there would be an increase in space on the belly hold area - thereby there will be new opportunities for us to provide additional capacity to the trading fraternity``, he added.

On spreading the wings of the BA World Cargo, Mr.Nothman noted that ''We have been able to look at other commodities, interesting and growing destinations and other areas of world where we recognise there is business``.

On the growing Chennai trade, the Vice-President said, ''We have spent a great deal of time with an exceedingly professional commercial team here in developing relationship with our customers. So the partnering arrangement with the trading fraternity is important. Our emphasis is that we would be providing the required capacity and not any excess capacity``.

On the internet friendly approach of the world cargo, he noted that the airline was progressing on the e-commerce line. ''And now we are working with a number of key global customers to help achieve this objective. BA World Cargo has its own web page and half of the consignments that we ship around the world are now being tracked on the web.

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