PDQ Specialist Couriers Guide to Air Export
PDQ Specialist Couriers are well know in the UK for our specialist UK and EU road freight options, but did we offer international freight through our Burnley office? We sat down with one of Burnley’s air freight experts and asked them some of your questions.
Why Air Freight?
Air Freight is a great solution for any shipment that needs to be moved over international borders in a time efficient manner, there is sometimes a myth that air freight always cost more than sea freight, this isn’t true, some LCL shipments via sea can cost more than by air and take weeks longer to arrive at the destination. We are IATA accredited agents, this means we work directly with the airlines rather than through another agent like some freight forwarders, we produce all documents in our office including AWB’s (Air Waybill’s) and NES (custom entries).
Which Airports can you ship out of?
Most international air freight we send goes out of MAN- Manchester International, LHR- London Heathrow or LGW- London Gatwick, this is purely for capacity reasons, regional airports tend to accept narrow body aircraft meaning limited cargo capacity, where as MAN, LHR and LGW have wide bodied aircraft and cargo aircraft landing daily, the exceptions to this are EMA- East Midlands Airport and PIK- Glasgow Prestwick Airport which also have the runway capacity for cargo/wide bodied planes.
What are the most common destinations?
We ship all over the world to over 700 destinations, United States is a popular routing we have weekly consolidations to IAH- Huston, PHL- Philadelphia and ORD- Chicago, we ship to China, Australia and many more destinations the list is endless.
What are my options when exporting?
We offer a verity of solutions to suit both the shipper and consignee’s requirements:
CPT- Carriage Paid To: this basically is Door to Airport once the freight lands the consignee is notified and arranges the onward travel
DAP- Delivered At Place: this is Door to Door but the consignee arranges the customs clearance and any duties/taxes payable
DDU- Delivered Duty Unpaid: this again is Door to Door including customs clearance but excludes the duties and taxes which are payable by the consignee
DDP- Delivered Duty Paid: Door to Door with everything settled by the shipper.
Do you import?
Yes we do! We’ve a ‘Badge’ at our local airport (MAN- Manchester International)
Do you carry DG/Hazardous?
We do, to ship DG/Hazardous we need to know a bit more about your freight including if its PAX/CAO (Allowed on passenger aircraft/cargo aircraft only), UN Number, Packing Group, Packing Instructions and the nature of the goods.
Do you ship Pharma?
Yes we do, we work with a number of airlines that offer specialist pharma solutions that are MHRA and GDP compliant.
What airlines do you work with?
Too many to list as IATA agents we work direct with over 70 different airlines!
What impact has Covid-19 had on air freight?
With the global pandemic things have changed since March from an air cargo point of view it is very dramatic airlines have cancelled many flights, changed aircraft reducing capacity, if one aircraft is cancelled/delayed it results in a chain of delays which has a knock on effect.
At the beginning of March we would have approx. 80 – 100 passenger flights a day leaving from MAN add this to LHR, STN, LGW and EMA and you can imagine how much cargo space that gave us to utilise. Towards the end of March almost all passenger flights stopped flying. Airlines were only flying repatriation flights to get people home from other countries and a number of freighters. So all UK airports went from having 10 – 20 flights an hour to 0. Until the start of June there were less than 10 scheduled flights a week out of MAN. The good news it that’s growing again and we have many more options.
With our strong ties to many airlines we have been able to find solutions routing freight via central Europe.
