Air Freight news update volume three

Welcome back to the AirFreight.com blog as we take another regular look at a number of the recent important news stories and articles that impact the air freight and air cargo industry. These posts complement our normal updates to provide many of the other facts, figures and opinions that help to bring a stronger understanding of the health of the air freight industry today. After each summary piece you just need to you can click on the blue link if you wish to learn more, so let’s get started.

United Airlines have acted on recent disconcerting fire safety reports from the FAA and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and placed far tighter restrictions on the transportation of lithium-ion batteries within cargo holds of all of their passenger aircraft. These changes bring the carrier into line with others who have made the changes and it's likely that more will follow.

Cargo congestion continues at the giant ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach which leads to a pattern of delay and frustration among customers. According to this article in the Los Angeles Daily News an increasing number of customers are exploring air freight options to allow shipments to arrive in time for the traditional December rush. In related news air freight tonnage handled at Los Angeles area airports was up dramatically in October compared with the same month in 2013.

Cathay Pacific and partner carrier Dragonair are reporting continued excellent air freight results for 2014 with November year-over-year tonnage increases of 12 percent maintaining the annual growth of 11.9 percent in 2014. Strong improvements in the Asian-North American markets leave the airline on track to perhaps eclipse an annual record set in 2010, read more at JOC.com,

Huntsville, Alabama released their November freight data that shows a dramatic decrease in rail freight while remarkable November increases in air freight tonnages of 6.7 percent following a more modest annual upturn of 1.6 percent the previous month, read all of the details at AL.com.

Miami (MIA) looks to capitalize on growing trade to and from Latin America with added air cargo services from new carrier Western Global Airlines, read more at perishablenews.com.

Ontario (ONT) airport might be heading back to being controlled by the city of Ontario, California after decades of control by the city of Los Angeles. Officials feel that a change in management can improve the overall performance of the airport which has seen passenger and air freight totals fall in recent years, more about this from the Press Enterprise.

We'll end there for this week but if you have stories you’d like to share or comments about these please get in touch via the comments section, our Twitter account or Facebook page.