April kicked off for Qatar Airways with the launch of a new freighter service. On April 1, an A330-200F touched down at Hyderabad to inaugurate twice-weekly all-cargo flights between the Indian city and Doha, Qatar.
Besides expanding the carrier’s main-deck network (it already runs passenger flights to Hyderabad), the new operation also spreads Qatar Airways’ footprint in a key market of the pharmaceutical business, coming on the heels of the launch of a special service targeting this sector. In January, the carrier unveiled two premium products for cargo requiring temperature-controlled conditions. Q Pharma caters to shippers of pharmaceutical and health care products with both active and passive services, while Q Fresh is for other perishables that need temperature control in transit.
Uli Ogiermann, Qatar Airways chief cargo officer, notes that people used to have reservations about routing perishables through the Middle East, given the region’s soaring temperatures.
“We brought in 30 cooler trucks that go directly to the plane, to the warehouse and the customs area. This makes us quite different. No one else has this,” he says, adding that the airline’s new premium products have been received even better than anticipated.
Besides the refrigerated trucks, another critical element in the cool chain puzzle is the carrier’s cargo facility at the new Doha airport. The US$15 billion (10.8 billion euro) airport, which had been scheduled for opening in April 2013, is now expected to come on stream in mid-2014, but cargo operations started already back in December 2013. The 77,000-square-meter (828,821-square-feet) facility, which will be able to handle 1.4 million tonnes of cargo, includes an extensive perishables area, although a chunk of this traffic will be transferred on the ramp, utilizing a specially designed Quick Ramp Transfer service.
At this point, Qatar Airways is running bonded trucks between the old and new airports. Ogiermann says this has been going smoothly, with transit times of about 30 minutes.
He will have no shortage of capacity to accommodate the fresh stream of traffic drawn by Qatar Airways’ new offerings. Its fleet, which comprised of 130 aircraft this past March, is set for a massive expansion, with orders for 280 planes worth over US$50 billion (36.2 billion euros) on its books.
“We have very steep growth ahead for the next three years. Every second week, we will take delivery of a new passenger aircraft – all wide-bodies,” Ogiermann says.
The freighter fleet is also expanding. Two B777-200Fs and one A330-200F are due to join the lineup this year, and two more will follow in 2015. At this point, Qatar has five 777 and three A330 cargo planes in action.
Ogiermann, who headed all-cargo carrier Cargolux in the past, says the combination of belly and freighter capacity is working well for the airline.
“We have five flights a day to London and three or four to Bangkok, so we can run a different product mix than a pure freighter operation. And we have a lot of online destinations that we could not reach if we only operated freighters,” he says.
Launching passenger service to emerging markets with wide-body aircraft enables the cargo division to build up the market to a point where a freighter can be brought in without incurring the cost of building up a market with a freighter from day one, he adds.
Above all, the role of the freighters is to feed the airline’s belly-hold network.
“This is the prime space,” Ogiermann says. “You never can go everywhere with belly capacity, and some markets never work for passenger flights, but first and foremost the freighters contribute to the belly production. You do not cannibalize that.”
Operating a mix of aircraft types, such as A330 and B777 freighters feeding a passenger lineup that includes A330s, A340s, B777s and B787s, poses some challenges unlike what Ogiermann dealt with when he was leading a 747 freighter operation, he admits.
“The contours are different, but this is something you can deal with,” he says.
The rapid expansion of the airline’s home market is fuelling strong growth in inbound cargo flow.
“There is a lot of project cargo for hotels, subway lines and tunnels. And there is a lot of perishables for a rapidly expanding population,” Ogiermann notes.
Still, the biggest focus is on transit. Their location has allowed Qatar and the other Middle Eastern carriers to tap into flows between Asia and points to the west – from Europe down to Africa.
“You can optimize flights easier. Because you are not at one end of the pipeline but in the middle, you can open sub-pipelines and fill them from either end,” Ogiermann says.
Another pipeline has opened up for his division through the agreement with IAG Cargo, under which the European carrier takes 400 tonnes a week on Qatar Airways’ five weekly B777F flights between Hong Kong and London. IAG has indicated that it is interested in taking the partnership further.
“It is too early to say where this is going,” Ogiermann says. “We are always open to talk.”