Turkish Cargo: Flying across the world
Halit Anlatan, Vice President-Cargo (Marketing & Sales), Turkish Cargo talks about the airline’s expansion plans across Europe and Asia Pacific, along with the changing nature of cargo business.
What services are you offering to the trade?
The facility has been designed to international standards and includes a large cargo admission area, accelerated cargo admission and operational processes, subject to cargo storage areas of various types and sizes, and combined operation areas, to name a few.
We have around 3,700 sq m area in this warehouse; 40 special cargo storage rooms serving for different purposes including cold storage, live animals, dangerous goods, vulnerable cargo, valuable cargo, and radioactive substances, with different temperature ranges. The temperature in these storage rooms varies between -21-0°C, 2-8°C. and 15-25 °C. We are separating all products according to their types and the temperature they need so that even their smells do not mix. We handle all kinds of time and temperature sensitive products, such as cool chain products and special products in this warehouse mainly for import and export goods to and from Turkey. These facilities are also used for stocking of goods. What is the ULD capacity of the terminal?
The annual tonnage capacity is approximately 1.2 million tonnes. What is your USP? We are CEIV pharma-certified, which is an IATA certification for pharmaceutical companies. We want to have a unique place in pharma industry as a service provider. From the beginning of the last year till the end of the last month, around 100 different customers, including shippers and forwarders, from the pharma industry have come to visit our warehouse or have observed our processes. If they require any change in the process, we provide the recommended changes accordingly. Which other vertical are you tapping?
Courier business is also increasing these days along with the e-commerce business. We are focusing on this and are also changing our processes as per the needs of the customers as a quick transfer from the landing and the take off is required. By August or September, we would be using our warehouse for courier business. We are negotiating with some companies from India for this purpose.
With our portal COMIS, we have a chance to see to which destinations are focused on and how further we can go on with this destination
Any expansion plans?
In parallel to the expansion of the global network of our parent company; Turkish Airlines, we are also effectuating programmed expansions on our freighter’s network. Currently, we have 11 freighters in our fleet, three A310s and eight A330s. We will be adding one more by the end of September this year and one by the end of January, 2017. What is the volume of tonnage - both belly and dedicated freighter services?
Last year, we have achieved around 720,000 tonnes from freighter and belly (70 per cent in the belly and 30 per cent in the freighters). Comparing to the previous year, the tonnages are promising, especially in comparison to the general situation of the global air cargo market. How and when was COMIS conceptualised?
With COMIS we have a chance to see to which destinations we are focused on and how further we can go with respect to the capacity. We are able to get the needs of the customers and this gives us more competitive structure as well as a time-tabled freighter schedule. In this portal one can apply as a customer with a username and password and can look at the tonnages and prices. It will be customised for the customers. By the end of September or October, it will be open for use of the customers. Are you looking at expanding cargo operations in India?
We are planning to strengthen our footprints in Hyderabad with a second freighter. We want to focus on wide bodies. We are also planning to increase freighters. the capacity of our How has the journey of Turkish Airlines been to the west in pursuit of American cargo?
We have started flights to two new destinations in the USA-Miami and Atlanta and are planning to place a freighter in Atlanta-New York and Chicago this year. We are increasing capacity in Los Angeles and planning to get a wide body aircraft for our operations in New York very soon. We are focusing on European destinations like Germany and Netherlands.