The Pitfalls of Airfreight

Airfreight is expensive so is assumed to be high quality when it comes to the transportation of pharmaceuticals globally.

It is very quick and largely reliable. Done well, it can be an excellent solution, assuming your product is valuable enough to warrant the cost.

However, there are pitfalls and it can only help you if you know what they are and how to avoid them.

In a typical air shipment you can expect up to 27 companies to be involved in your product getting from A to B. This might seem excessive but think about it for a moment: you; the freight forwarder; the airline; the export Customs broker; the airline handling agent; the transport company which collects it and delivers to the airline; the ground handling company; Customs; regulatory agencies; etc – it soon adds up.

The sales person from the airline our freight forwarder will promote their seamless service without ever explaining what task one of these performs. In fact, the freight forwarder which you contract will probably only have a contract with the airline so has little control over all the other bodies.

Okay, now how confident do you feel that GDP will be followed throughout the whole chain, not to mention will your product stay in temperature?

A regular comment at this stage is along the lines of "well I put a declaration on the Airwaybill asking the airline to maintain temperature between 15 and 25 degrees". You may well have but what if the majority of the cargo needs to be kept at a different temperature, or if the pilot uses degrees F instead of C or if, as is most common, your instruction is simply completely ignored?

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For temperature, airlines often offer a pharma service – at a premium of course! Different airlines have different names for it and the level of offering varies by provider. You might assume that solves all your problems but experience has shown our company that this is not the case. The most regular issue we have incurred is when the product gets transferred at origin from the airline warehouse to the aircraft, then back to the warehouse at destination. This period is often known as the freight being on the ramp or on the tarmac.

Some airlines use specially cooled transfer trucks, called cool dollies, whilst others use reflective blankets and the promise of temperature controlled warehouses en route, if a plane change is required. However, we have had issues with all of these, the worst being product left in a non-temperature controlled warehouse for over 36 hours despite being booked, and paid for on a temperature controlled service.

Of course, you could take matters into your own hands and use an active cooling device. These are a good solution but can be very expensive. Also, they are not available at all locations since airports and airlines usually have to be certified to use them and this is, rightly a lengthy process. There can be further issues in that active systems usually require intervention en route, be that re-icing, new batteries or simply plugging in to a power supply. We had a funny situation (I wasn’t laughing at the time) where we used a system from Indonesia but the plug was of one type and the socket another – rather like trying to plug an English device into a French socket with no converter…!

There are passive systems out there and this is the solution we have chosen to adopt. It is not perfect but has the advantage of working for up to 5 days without intervention, irrespective of outside temperatures. Also, it gives an extra layer of protection making the product more resistant to handling damages. However, these systems, whilst not prohibitively expensive, increase the cost of airfreight as you are shipping a lot of weight and bulk around. They also require careful management in terms of preparation, stocking, reverse logistics etc.

So, the above is a brief guide to some of the more obvious problems with air shipments – happy flying!