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Aviation History
1987
1987 - 0299.PDF
Chicago service for a year for KLM, the Dutch national carrier. The sub-charter work includes ad hoc flights for carriers in technical difficulty, and longer-term wet- or dry-lease contracts. Most carriers use their own pilots because Martinair's cockpit config urations are standardised with those of KLM, Swissair, SAS, and UTA. In addi tion to operating regular flights for 13 different airlines in 1985, Martinair ran a weekly DC-10 service for passengers between Amsterdam and the Seychelles for Air Seychelles, and a DC-9 service for Austrian Airlines. In committing itself largely to cargo, 80 per cent of which originates from outside the Netherlands, Martinair uses two DC-lOs to carry cargo all year round on the Middle-Far East and US west coast routes, while during the winter all wide- body aircraft are kept in cargo config uration. During the summer, improved flexibility in mixing cargo and passenger services allows nine tonnes of cargo to be flown in the belly of an A310 and three tonnes in a DC-10 during inclusive-tour flights to the Mediterranean, returning fully laden with fresh fruit and vegetables. Grapes were carried back from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Europe last summer, for instance, and loads of tomatoes returned this winter from Las Palmas. A speciality is carrying livestock and day-old chicks. Saudi Arabian Airlines, for FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 2 May 1987 example, uses a DC-10, for which Martinair has special double-tier pens, to carry cattle from the USA to Saudi Arabia. The pens, which are inter changeable between A310s and DC-lOs, can be stored in the aircraft belly to facili tate conventional cargo flights on the return leg to Europe. Martinair is also the leading carrier of day-old chicks to the Middle East and North Africa. It takes three weeks for the chicks to hatch in their European incubators, after which they are packed into crates and taken to the near est airport. A DC-10 accommodates 500,000 chicks which are kept alive by an enhanced passenger ventilation system. The chicks, which, unlike adult chickens, can survive for up to 36hr without food, are flown at night to arrive in the Middle East the next morning to be fed by their waiting importers. Martinair operates three main cargo services to: the Middle and Far East, North America, and Africa. Although in 1986 the weak US dollar generated extra cargo traffic from the Far East—resulting in additional Hong Kong-New York services—cargo from the Far East declined in early 1985. The decline was offset, however, by an increase in traffic to the Far East and to the USA, especially exports of flowers for which the carrier has been running a twice-weekly service to New York until May. The African service has declined in recent years following the debt crisis, especially in Nigeria, and because DC-10s were too big for the volume of business from sub-Saharan Africa. The latter problem has been resolved, however, by introducing the smaller A310, whose volume-to-weight ratio has been improved by a higher ceiling which allows for two rows of 16 pallets side by side plus another two at the rear. Central to the carrier's cargo policy is the "corridor" system, using so-called "scheduled charters" to make inter mediate stops on a major route at the customer's request. On the Middle East- Far East route, for example, this allows Opposite and left The DC-10-30CF is just one of three widebody types which Martinair operates. Below left Martin Schroder is the carrier's founder and president cargo to be flown on the same day and at greatly reduced cost to several desti nations. In 1985, Martinair served up to 22 destinations on this route by including stops in Qatar, North Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East; Vietnam, Nepal, Malaysia, Laos, and Thailand in the Far East; and Australia and New Zealand. Stops at relatively small airports off the beaten track are aided by the unique on board loading equipment carried by their DC-lOs. The fully collapsible high-loader, stored in the belly and wheeled out at poorly-equipped airports, operates hydraulically off the aircraft's electrical system and is set up by two men in half an hour. The added flexibility this allows, along with that of the corridor system, which combines a scheduled regularity with the flexibility of a charter, beats most non-charter carriers, whose schedules seldom can be adapted to meet such specific, and often hasty, customer needs. Not that this has protected Martinair's scheduled charters from attack by char ters carrying cargo into Hong Kong, for example, and by scheduled carriers with widebody aircraft flying cargo in the belly or in combination. "Potentially more harmful," warns sales and marketing director Frank Allard, "are restrictions by local governments on our number of flights a week." The Dutch response has been two-pronged. First the number of gateways has been increased: Taiwan now serves alongside Hong Kong as the second gateway for Far East cargo, and a weekly service is planned for 1987 to Sydney, Australia, thus effectively extending the Far East corridor. Second, the airline emphasises "sea-air" transport, in which cargo is consolidated at local seaports. In the Far East, for example, this means that sea-air cargo is shipped from Japan and Korea to Hong Kong, Taipei, or Bangkok, from where it is flown to Europe or the Middle East. Alternatively, Japanese and Korean cargo can be shipped to the US west coast, and then flown onwards. The sea-air system, started by Martinair in 1982, is cost- efficient and ideally suited to delivering cargo within a couple of weeks, especially in Far East countries having ready access to seaports. It has proved so popular, in fact, that in March this year Martinair doubled its existing weekly Seattle and San Francisco services to accommodate the increase in sea-air cargo from the Far East. To offer cargo services worldwide, Martinair has sales offices in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, London, New York, San Fran cisco, Seattle, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, Osaka, and Sydney. Although initially the intention was not to open offices in the Gulf—having assumed that marketing information and feedback could be gathered in Europe—the airline now has local cargo sales agents in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, and Bahrain, with more to follow in future. Broadening the sales network, in fact, is part of the 23
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