The role of data during Covid-19: Solutions for the airfreight industry

Covid-19 created a dramatic shift in our personal lives, the pandemic recalibrated almost every industry. With a near-halt in passenger flights and a stressed global supply chain, the aviation sector is nearly unrecognizable. We see airlines and cargo operators doing everything possible to adapt, including rapidly switching gears to support the world-wide demand for emergency supplies and essential goods.

Change by the numbers

According to Flightradar24, the end of January 2020 saw upwards of 116,000+ commercial flights a day, including passenger, cargo, charter, and business jet flights. As of mid-April, those numbers were hovering around 30,800. This includes a 90% drop in passenger air travel.

Commercial flights tracked between Jan. and April. Includes passenger, cargo, charter, and business jet flights. (via Flightradar24)

In addition to creating major upheaval in the travel industry, this dramatic drop in passenger flights jolted global supply chains. Before the recent coronavirus impact, a passenger plane’s hold was around 50% passenger luggage and 50% cargo. With that capacity gone, cargo flights are picking up the slack and seeing a boom in business (even if this chart makes it look like business as usual).

Download sample data

As air cargo demand fell in February by 9.1% globally, you can see cargo aircraft traffic has remained steady (in fact, some cargo airlines are flying even more than before). This is the result of resilient airlines and freight forwarders filling the gap left by grounded passenger jets as well as stepping up to transport urgently needed medical supplies like personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, and hand sanitizer.

Private-Public collaboration

In the U.S., the public-private partnership Project Airbridge was established to reduce the medical supply chain capacity gap and speed up shipping of life-saving supplies (transporting goods from overseas factories to the U.S. can take 20-40 days by ship, compared to just 2-3 days by air). Working with Project AirBridge, UPS added 200+ flights in April, shipping protective equipment, ventilators, emergency room monitoring equipment, Coronavirus test kits, and more.

Meanwhile, FedEx delivered its first shipment of 450,000+ Tyvek® protective suits from Vietnam to Texas. In the weeks that follow, the company pledges 500,000+ suits will be shipped each week.

Use of Data Analytics

With such rapid change, data-driven solutions have never been more important. Freight and logistics companies can use data from many sources, including ADS-B air traffic data and weather data, to prepare their businesses for worst-case scenarios and help with crisis management. Similar to how financial trading companies have long recognized that fast and real-time data is key to staying competitive, freight and shipping companies are increasingly realizing that data analytics is key to making their businesses more efficient and future-proof.

Freightwaves is a company that provides market intelligence and data analytics to the global freight industry, for both ocean and air freight. They use Spire Aviation to acquire comprehensive air traffic data and use that data to provide actionable insights to their customers, such as tracking airport delays, determining delay causes, verifying the accuracy of schedules, understanding the impacts of specific company policies, analyzing weather impacts, and more.

In a recent study by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), 93% of shippers and 98% of third-party logistics companies said that data analytics is critical to making intelligent decisions, while 71% of them said they believed big data improves quality and performance. It’s a logical deduction that data driven solutions would be rated as even more important during crisis management.