UPS is changing how it handles heavy air freight from forwarders, transferring some of its former Menlo Forwarding operations in the United States and Europe to UPS Airlines from the contracted lift the carrier had been using.

Throughout June, the air freight operations, which had long been based at Dayton, Ohio, will move in phases to the big UPS air hub at Louisville, Ky., which already handles UPS's package operations, plus to new regional freight terminals where UPS has package operations.

Once it completes that transition, said UPS spokesman Stephen Boggs, the company will close the Dayton facility as it has been planning since it acquired the forwarding unit in December 2004.

The tightly-planned transition involves shifting flight paths and crews, activating different aircraft and terminals and phasing out an array of contracts for freighters and crews.

Boggs said UPS switched over its European air freight operations to a hub in Cologne, Germany, June 2 from Menlo Forwarding's former base at Brussels for inter-European and trans-Atlantic flights. That also replaced the Dayton-Brussels traffic with flights between Cologne and Louisville, Philadelphia and Newark, N.J.

At that same time, the company launched a three-phase program in the United States, shifting some freight lanes to UPS aircraft in Louisville and activating regional freight hubs at Philadelphia, Columbia, S.C., Dallas, Rockford, Ill., and Ontario, Calif.

The Independent Pilots Association, which represents UPS flight crews, said in its union newspaper UPS is putting 12 aircraft into the freight effort that were either unassigned or on other routes.

John D. Boyd