Page 35 - Latinaero_magazine_issue_02_March_2012

revista Latinaero 35 Number 2 - 2012
Douglas DC-8-62H• Skymaster Airline
Boeing 727-243 • Total Cargo
Cessna Super Caravan • Two Aviation
Boeing 737-300SF • Sideral Air Cargo
Brazil’s air cargo companies
The continent-size of Brazil was without any doubt the catalyst
which prompted over the past quarter of a century the develop-
ment of cargo aviation, outstandingly in the absence of any other
fast delivery network.
Two main reasons –but there are more– explain why cargo
aviation now expands into an even more important undertaking.
First, as passenger transport gradually grew with the emergence of
well equiped airports, cargo aviation surfed in the wake as wheel
transport could not benefit from a good road system everywhere,
and singularly in the desinherited Nordeste region and Amazonia.
Second, in the eighties, all the pre-1973 airliners fitted with old
generation gasoline guzzler and noisy jet engines were to be found
by dozens at a very low second-hand price tag. This lead many
Brazilian moguls to start their own cargo companies, often with
limited funds. This explains why many company names in Brazil
appear and often soon disappear…
Besides, when, in 2005, the Força Aérea Brasileira retired its
fleet of twelve aged Hawker Siddeley (Avro) 748 turboprops, the
postal mission, which had long been the responsibility of the Brazi-
lian air force, was passed over civilian contracted companies which
are now operating the Rede Transporte Noturno (RDN), that is the
transport of mail and parcels to many destinations around the
country on behalf of the Âgencia Nacional de Correios e Telegrafos,
the Brazilian national postal service. Transport of air mail is cate-
gorised in a different manner by the regulatory bodies responsible
for air transportation as it is a specific type of material transported.
In relation to airfares, the Correios contracts services with airlines
after public bids announced previously in the main Brazilian news-
papers. In many instances the Correios rents non regular airplanes
to transport mail during the evening. Hence the name RDN, for
Night Transportation Network.
The seven leading Brazilian cargo airlines are: Tam Linhas Aé-
reas, Gol Linhas Aéreas, Variglog (now in bankruptcy), Skymaster
Airlines, Beta Cargo – Brasilian Express Transporte Aéreos, ABSA-
Aerolinhas Brasileiras, Avianca (formerly Oceanair Linhas Aéreas).
[see list on p. 28].
The demand for air cargo transport observed in Brazil has
experienced high growth rates. From 1994 to 2003 domestic and
international air cargo traffic in Brazil increased by 35.9 %. In 2001
cargo handling (storage and terminal handling) accounted for
28.8% of total revenue for Infraero, the company that runs the 66
largest airports in Brazil. Since then these figures have grown in line
with the growth of passenger air transport. Moreover, air transport
has been taking on an important role in organizing production as
a result of its speed, flexibility, reliability, and security, with great
potential for being used in new logistics strategies adopted by
companies, mainly in the transport of high added-value goods.
The importance of the cargo sector in Brazil is strong. It ex-
plains why for many air companies revenue from cargo operations
is higher than revenue from passenger operations. On top of that,
over the past years, Brazil’s national civil aviation authority ANAC
has done much to encouraging competition in air cargo transport
to force a drop in charges. u
ATR 42- 500 • JadLog (Total Linhas Aéreas)
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