Aviation’s Latest Growth Industry

The courier is then thoroughly briefed on the relative consignments on the manifest before boarding the aircraft. Typically on a Sydney/London flight one courier will fly the entire route but various bags in the initial consignment will be for en-r9ute ports, such as Bahrain or Singapore, etc. Conversely, additional satchels will be picked up en route as requirement demands. In all, one courier may be responsible for up to one hundred 30kg satchels at any one time. In terms of invoice value this could comfortably exceed $100,000 though the cost of providing such a service is not cheap.

A normal economy ticket is purchased, usually Apex or its equivalent, while the satchels fly as priority first-class baggage. Despite the obvious cost of upgrading the satchels to First Class status the time savings can be as much as a half hour at the destination airport. In an industry where literally every minute counts that brief saving on a 25-hour flight is the difference between being a market leader and just another courier company. The benefit of using the on-board couriers of course is that accompanied baggage clears customs quickly and can be fed into a ground system that is honed to get the goods to their destination in the quickest possible time.

In Australia the market leader is TNT Skypak. This firm needs no introduction to our readership and is one of the international leaders in the high-priority on-board courier field. TNT Skypak now controls more than 50% of the thirty million dollar plus Australian market and though it operated such a service during the late seventies it wasn’t till a major Qantas air cargo strike in 1980 that the firm decided to plunge into on-board couriers in a big way.

As an example of what it costs let us look at sending a copy of this magazine along with a few letters to London. It would cost $23. 80 door to door with a pick up from our Sydney office around 2 PM to depart later that afternoon on QF1 arriving at Heathrow early the next morning. My client in London would have the magazine on his desk by mid-morning. Obviously an expensive way to receive your average copy of Australian Aviation but if my client in London is a multi-billion dollar aerospace firm that urgently needs our magazine for an advertising proposal then the last thing we are going to do is post it!

Over the years there have been a variety of unusual consignments that in one way or another have ‘saved the day’ for those concerned. Australia ll’s victory in the America’s Cup was aided by an urgently made replacement sail being dispatched by Skypak from Perth to Newport in less than 36 hours door to door. . Prince Charles’ Papua New Guinea independence medal had been misplaced as he was about to leave Britain to officiate at the PNG anniversary celebrations. As protocol demanded that he arrive in the former colony wearing the medal and the medal had been located shortly after his jet had lifted off from Heathrow, it was a case of Skypak literally beating the VIP aircraft to its destination. When official ceremonies commenced the Prince had his medal! A businessman en route to Europe discovers to his horror that he has left home without his life support medication, using Skypak he has it within hours of arriving at his Frankfurt hotel. Some more unusual consignments included coal dust samples from Sydney to Newcastle, England, blood cells from Miami to Sydney, sand samples from Sydney to Saudi Arabia and dung beetles from Paris to Sydney!

Generally speaking, though the bulk of consignments are critical spare parts, samples, documents and related legal goods. Skypak operates worldwide to 53 countries and employs over 4,500 people, 145 of which are in Australia. Wars don’t even stop the ‘mail’ getting through. In the finest traditions of the service, witness the service to Beirut continuing through the worst of the Lebanese conflict via a high-powered speed boat service from nearby Cyprus!

Obviously this is a big business for the airlines. British Airways was the first to initiate a special director for handling on-board courier operations and more recently the others have caught up. Most major airports, including KSA, have developed special clearing houses to expedite the satchels which in most cases the courier rarely even glimpses.

Probably the fastest such service is the special BA Concorde service connecting London with New York or Washington. With this particular flight you can lodge your documents at the start of the day’s trading in London and have them on a client’s New York desk before lunchtime that day, thanks to the difference in time zones and the speed of Concorde. As outlined in our December ’84 issue BA feature, this is big business for Concorde that is estimated to be worth in the region of $A4m for 1985 alone.

How do you become a courier?

Ironically most couriers are not full-time professional travellers. Skypak utilises the entire human resources of the 46,000 employees associated with the TNT group (which includes Ansett in this case) in a system that is well-received by company and employees alike. Basically, the vast majority of Skypak couriers are TNT employees who have lodged their intention to undertake the journey in conjunction with annual leave. Having placed the bid, the Skypak calendar girl (who· must be a real pin-up with a designation like that!) assembles the schedules into order to coincide as much as possible with the approximate travelling intentions of the employee. This way TNT staff can take advantage of the system to holiday abroad and Skypak has its own inbuilt, trained couriers on hand. The employee’s ticket is fully paid and as the TNT staff courier is officially working strict codes of behaviour must be adhered to en-route as outlined by the company, as his or her holidays don’t commence till after arrival at the final destination. Most large operators work this way though some do employ professional on-board couriers who may easily log 200,000km a month. Probably the best way to answer how they overcome jet lag is that they don’t! . . . .

With annual growth running in the region of . 25% difficult to see why the airlines are assisting the forwarders. in getting their share of the multi-million dollar on-board courier market. Some traditional. airline scheduling presents problems however and from Australia’s point of view norie can be more inappropriate than of the existing tra!1s-Tasman services

As most Australia to New Zealand flights depart Australia around midday to early afternoon they cannot meet the typical late afternoon pick-up time that clients demand. This then results in the consignment departing the next day and not being delivered to the final destination till the commencement of trading the following morning. Hence a valuable consignment may depart its Sydney office on Monday afternoon and not be delivered in Wellington, Christchurch or Auckland till Wednesday morning – far longer than it takes to get the same item to Europe: The International Air Couriers Association of Australia is lobbying to commence a corporate jet service from Sydney to Auckland that would be shared by all concerned. Skypak believes there exists a current market of at least 1500kg a night for such a service using Sydney and Auckland as regional. hubs. Apparently. The scheduled carriers have been frustrating attempts to 1rnt1ate such a service though the IACA hope to have the issue resolved by mid-1985. . .

Freight has been growing in leaps and bunds these last ten years and the dawn· of the on-board couriers with their high-priority cargo is perhaps aviation’s strongest growth industry of the eighties.