Prospects still positive...
...despite a challenging start to the year in Athens. Athens’ air cargo community is reaching for the stars to make our blue planet greener. Lina Palli, the airport’s cargo development manager, talks about the new challenges that are being tackled with the community standing shoulder to shoulder.
For the Athens airport cargo community, 2022 was yet another successful year, despite the challenges faced due to the Ukraine war, the worldwide economic instability, and the energy crisis (see also page 5).
Lina Palli has an explanation for the good figures. The senior account supervisor for cargo development in AIA’s ground handling and cargo development department says that every member of the airport cargo supply chain united to confront these uncertainties and provide their customers with the best solutions.
Providing local players with much-needed capacities
“Once more,” Palli said, “the public sector, represented by the customs authorities, the post office and the ministry of agriculture, coupled its efforts with those of private companies, namely cargo handlers, freight forwarders, airlines, integrators, and Athens International Airport (AIA), to offer effective and efficient one-stop services.”
As a result, annual volumes improved by 4.8% compared to 2021 and by 7.3% compared to 2019. The rebounding of international flights to a level of almost 90% of 2019’s traffic, combined with the increased operation of cargo flights (+5.4% vis-à-vis 2019) provided the local market with much-needed cargo capacities.
Prospects for 2023 are also positive. Although the new year made a slow start, March 2023’s figures were up again, surpassing March 2019’s volume by 3.1%. the month nevertheless still lagged 1.9% behind 2022’s traffic.
Outlook for 2023 / 2024 and beyond
In the scope of the EU ‘Stargate’ project, in which AIA participates as a partner, a cargo related proof-of-concept is scheduled for July this year. The ‘Stargate’ members’ joint mission is to develop, test and deploy a set of innovative solutions making aviation and airports significantly greener and more sustainable. Along those lines, the Athens pilot project will involve the leading freight and post handler at the airport, as well as two international forwarders.
The aim will be to introduce a landside slot management application that will drastically reduce waiting times for trucks, which will simultaneously also reduce the carbon footprint, and make operations much more efficient overall. If the twelve-month pilot project is successful, then the aim is to upgrade this novel service to a standard operation thereafter.
Skyserv and Swissport Greece are also on the home stretch of their efforts to match Goldair Holding and become Iata CEIV Pharma certified in the cargo terminal and at the ramp. “Thanks to our collaborative approach,” Palli looked ahead, “AIA will be among the first European airports to be Iata CEIV Pharma certified.”
She and members of the AIA cargo community will be happy to meet up and provide information at Air Cargo Europe (stand 252 in hall B2).