Swiss airports get high marks

Swiss airports get high marks    Air cargo service at Switzerland's three largest airports ' Basel, Geneva and Zurich ' is critical to the country's economy, which is known for producing high-value goods and services.
   Swiss airports are rated high for their freight handling speed, ability to make bookings on short notice, accessibility and operating hours of handling agents, and smooth interaction among all supply chain partners, according to a survey of 217 manufacturing, trading and logistics companies conducted by researchers at the University of St. Gallen.
   Companies believe the air cargo industry provides a good value and are largely satisfied with the existing infrastructure.
   But the Swiss air market also is weaker than other European countries when it comes to the availability of direct flights, sufficient frequencies, limited availability of full freighter services and the opening hours of customs authorities, according to the findings reported in Swiss Worldcargo's latest quarterly magazine.
   Swiss air freight is mostly transported on passenger flights.
   Exporters said they want further infrastructure enhancements at Swiss airports to improve the handling of air cargo during peak times, and expansion of the capacity for temperature-controlled imports and valuables exports.

Forwarders should find their niche
   Smaller freight forwarders face an existential threat from large integrated logistics companies, but Julian Keeling, founder of Los Angeles-based Consolidators International Inc., says surviving requires finding niche markets rather than trying to compete head-to-head with the big boys.

Keeling

   It's a theme he's riffed on before and recently took to The International Air Cargo Association's annual conference in Amsterdam.
   The situation is a function of shippers reducing the number of transportation providers to gain more control of their inventory and seeking a single point of contact for all their global logistics needs.
   Skip the warehousing and other services and focus on transportation management, Keeling told industry colleagues at the conference, according to a summary of his comments.
   The types of 'hidden markets' the small forwarder should pursue include cargo bound for less-populated, secondary destinations where a constant supply of consumer and business products is required but in lesser quantities.
   CII, for example, spied an opportunity in America Samoa, population 65,000, and now generates 80 percent of the air forwarding business to that South Pacific island in addition to providing ocean container service. A major customer there is the tuna industry.
   Keeling also pointed to niche markets such as skateboarding, fly fishing, and special testing machinery for computers as examples of businesses that can be profitable to the smaller forwarder. He cautioned small freight management companies to have a balanced group of accounts with no one customer generating more than 10 percent to 15 percent of revenue to prevent a crisis if a customer is lost.

UPS package intercept upsets Muslims
   UPS is catching fire from a Muslim community in northern Virginia because U.S. passports sent through its package network never reached the consignees in time to make their flight to Saudi Arabia, where they planned to participate in a ritual pilgrimage.
   A California travel agency arranged their tickets and got visas for their passports, shipping them overnight via UPS, according to an article in the Washington Post.
   The travelers said the passports never arrived. At first UPS said the package was lost, but later informed them U.S. Customs and Border Protection had seized the package.
   By the time the passports were released all but one of the travelers had missed their flight.
   The mistake brought some people to tears because Muslims are required to make the hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, the birthplace of the prophet Mohammed, at least once in their life. Millions of people attend the hajj each year.
   CBP stepped up to the plate and bought the group outbound replacement tickets at a total cost of $34,000, according to the Post. Saudi Airlines agreed to honor the original return flights.
   A UPS spokesperson told the newspaper the package delivery company cooperates with government agencies on security matters.
   A CBP spokesman would not comment on whether UPS regularly shares packages with the agency.
   Cemal Gumus, the imam at Dar Al-Noor mosque in Manassas, said some members believed the Arabic name on the package attracted attention.
   'I think UPS security may be targeting these packages and may be turning them over' to the customs agency, he said.
   'We need to get to the bottom of who is flagging these packages en route, and why, and whether it's some overreaction to the recent packages coming out from Yemen,' Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in the article. He said his office had learned of at least three other instances of Muslims' passports failing to arrive via UPS in the past week.
   The situation raises interesting questions because express delivery companies and airlines that haul international freight are talking to CBP about how to supply more advance information to help the government intercept suspicious packages before a plane departs for the United States.
   And we know CBP has officers stationed as a routine matter at major UPS and FedEx hubs to expedite customs clearance. But they are supposed to be responsible for regulating import and export shipments. The passports were transported domestically. The Saudi consulate in Los Angeles stamped the visas and shipped them, Dar Al Noor President Mohammad Mehboob told me.
   The Transportation Security Administration doesn't have a system in place yet to collect shipment data and analyze it for red flags, so perhaps it is piggy-backing on CBP's database in the type of collaborative manner expected of government. But, if that's the case, shouldn't it be the one ultimately making the call on whether to seize a package?