|
Toronto - Northwest Airlines has fielded a dedicated truck run to feed its freighters departing from Guangzhou with cargo from Hong Kong. Since August, the airline has been running bonded trucks from Chek Lap Kok airport to Guangzhou's Baiyun International airport.
It claims to be the first airline to operate a bonded express trucking service from Hong Kong to Baiyun.
Northwest's truck run serves the route once a day, leaving Hong Kong at 7 am to arrive in Guangzhou four hours later, with one Customs check in Huanggong.
"If demand requires it, we can run a second truck," said Jim Friedel, president of Northwest Cargo.
Load factors on the run to Baiyun are around 90 percent, according to the airline. Northwest also carries some traffic on the return leg to Hong Kong, feeding its passenger flights from there, but the main reason for the operation is northbound traffic.
The service was launched because many forwarders are interested in moving exports out of Baiyun but lack the volume in Guangzhou at the moment to develop a full consolidation schedule, Friedel said.
He expects traffic out of Baiyun to grow, which will ultimately eliminate the need for Northwest Airline's truck service to Baiyun.
"It's probably going to be useful for another 8-12 months. Then most forwarders will have probably outgrown the need for this service," he reflected.
Northwest has daily passenger flights out of Hong Kong to the US via Japan but terminated its freighter service to Hong Kong at the end of last year. It had started B747-200F flights to Baiyun in 2005, initially twice weekly, and upped the frequency to daily service this March, making use of new traffic rights under the China-US bilateral deal. |
RELATED