Civil aviation is divided into three categories: passenger, cargo, and general. Among them, cargo airlines are divided into three types, namely express cargo airlines, cargo departments or all-cargo subsidiaries of passenger airlines, and pure cargo airlines. Cargo accounts for about 9% of the total revenue of the aviation industry. There are two ways of air transportation: one is pure cargo aircraft, which uses special cargo aircraft to operate scheduled flights or temporary charter flights. The cargo is mainly trade cargo, and pure cargo aircraft on international routes account for a small number; the other is to use the belly of passenger flights for transportation. Although the belly capacity of passenger aircraft is small and scattered, there are many flights. The belly capacity of passenger aircraft worldwide is nearly 5 times that of cargo aircraft. According to statistics, the average time for the global air cargo delivery and reception is 134 hours, and the air transport section only takes 44 hours. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has proposed the “Global Development, Regional Delivery” initiative, in which ground cooperation is the key to speeding up.
There is a clustering effect in air transport capacity. Driven by the manufacturing and trade in the Greater Bay Area of the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong Airport has been ranked first in the world in Freight & Mail throughput for nearly 20 years. It is a global air transit center. Express delivery companies such as DHL and UPS take off and land hundreds of times at Hong Kong Airport every week.
At present, the security inspection requirements and customs clearance conditions of airports in mainland China are difficult to fully meet the actual operation of cross-border parcels, and live goods are basically unable to be shipped. A large proportion of cross-border e-commerce goods are shipped through Hong Kong, China, because Hong Kong has dense routes and has the international port location advantage of a free trade port. It can achieve 24-hour customs clearance and has multiple customs clearance modes. In addition, there are many conveniences such as freight forwarders packing and palletizing by themselves, passing the entire pallet through security inspection machines, and receiving live goods. Many inland airports absorb cargo sources through various policy subsidies and cargo charter flights, but they are still not comparable to first-tier airports.
There are relatively few professional cargo airports, pure cargo airlines, and all-cargo aircraft in China. The international cargo market is mainly a competition between the four major domestic airlines and foreign airlines, and foreign airlines occupy 70% of the international market share. Due to the small supply of return cargo and the imbalance of supply and demand in the off-season and peak season, when the demand reaches a certain amount, they directly open boards or book cabins. Even e-commerce platforms have begun to directly purchase air transport capacity. Generally, the cabin space of a connecting flight is cheaper than that of a direct flight, because the transfer time is long, but there is a higher risk of lost goods. Changing the means of transport in the middle is transit. Usually, before shipping, you should consult the airline or its agent in advance according to the size and weight of the cargo to understand the loading requirements of the flight model, such as the requirements for palletizing or weight limits for nose doors, side doors, and bulk warehouses.
International express is international air express, which means that express companies cooperate with airlines to deliver international urgent items by air. The nature of the business and the mode of transportation are slightly different from ordinary air cargo. The latter generally refers to door-to-door air transportation services for general cargo. Most air freight forwarders operate both. Express delivery companies have a wider range of terminal customers and are more guaranteed in terms of timeliness. In order to ship out goods in a timely manner, they often use high-priced limited space. In order to control the space, many cross-border e-commerce logistics companies directly cooperate with airlines, based on “international air transport + terminal express delivery”, making the cost lower than international express delivery.