Non-profit initiative Care by Air aims to promote the idea that the business aviation community can also play its part in helping with transportation and logistics support for humanitarian causes.
The group says that 80% of the UN humanitarian aid budget goes to the cost of logistics. Given that, there is an opportunity for the aviation industry to give back to society simply by offering unused capacity at cost price for humanitarian causes.
Care by Air says that flights worldwide are 34% empty - equal to 1.5 million tonnes of empty cargo space. If just 0.0003% of the empty space is filled with rice, that can provide dinner for 5 million hungry people, it adds. Business aviation can also be used to help with medevac operations, it says.
"MEBA is the perfect platform to interact with business aviation companies and promote humanitarian efforts - to expose just how much we can work together not just in terms of cargo space, but by providing fuel, haulage, warehousing and other costs," says Care by Air.
"We look forward to educating the business aviation community on what we do and how they can get involved."
Source: Flight Daily News