Qatar Airways Cargo is taking a bigger bite out of the Big Apple – one mixed with Canadian seafood. In July, the Middle Eastern carrier inaugurated freighter service to New York’s JFK airport. The weekly flight, which utilizes a Boeing 777 Freighter, is routed from the carrier’s home base in Doha to Luxembourg and Zaragoza, continuing to New York and on to Halifax to return across the Atlantic to Zaragoza.

QR has thrown a considerable amount of lift into the Big Apple this year. In March it added a daily passenger service with Airbus A350 equipment to its daily 777 passenger flight to JFK. The double-daily passenger frequency translates into 125 tonnes of bellyhold capacity in a week.

The airline has not disclosed how much lift on the freighter is allocated to the New York market.

Air France-KLM Cargo also sees room for growth in the New York cargo market. In July, the carrier opened a new cargo facility at JFK, which marks a significant upgrade from its previous presence at the airport. It has 50% more truck doors and ample space for trucks to park and is equipped with ‘ULD roll-through’ capability for rapid handling of containers and a special entrance for express shipments. To handle a variety of temperature-sensitive types of cargo, the facility has several cool chain areas set for different temperature ranges.

Special freight is a large target for the carrier at the airport. The facility has a strong-room for valuable cargo, and it is housed in the same building as the airport’s ‘Ark’, a dedicated animal handling facility set to come on stream this autumn.

The airport’s push to develop live animal traffic appears as an effort to regain lost ground, or at least halt decline, in cargo volumes. Other large US gateways – including Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami – have gained traffic in recent years as smaller airports suffered declining throughput, but JFK has not seen cargo grow during those years.

A senior executive of a large Asian carrier noted that JFK has lagged the other US airports it serves. United Airlines pulled out of JFK altogether last November in a swap with Delta, consolidating its New York activities at Newark airport.

Mike Webber, president of airport consulting firm Webber Air Cargo, pointed to JFK’s slump in US gateway rankings. In the year 2000, Los Angeles was the nation’s leading cargo gateway, followed by JFK, Miami and Chicago, in that order. In 2014, Miami topped the list, followed by Los Angeles, then Chicago, and JFK had sunk into fourth place.

Bob Imbriani, executive vice president international at forwarder Team Worldwide, sees a combination of reasons for JFK’s decline over the years. For starters, its chief international markets have suffered. Whereas Asian trade has grown, volumes in the trans-Atlantic trade lanes are down, he noted.

The long-term change in the Big Apple’s industrial base has contributed to the declining cargo throughput, as has the migration of some international traffic to rising gateways like Atlanta and Dallas/Fort Worth, he added.

Miami and Los Angeles have no natural competitors for their respective domains, whereas New York’s position as the chief gateway from Europe has eroded over the years as trans-Atlantic carriers have kept adding US entry points, Webber noted.

It has not helped that access to JFK has been notoriously challenging. Imbiani pointed out that cargo that lands at the airport has to cross two bridges to reach the mainland, which adds time and cost. The main traffic artery to the airport is chronically congested, which adds to forwarders’ grief.

The smaller roads in the area compound the problem. These streets and the hold area were not built for 53-ft trucks, which can barely manoeuvre there.

Two years ago, New York governor Andrew Cuomo suggested that cargo flights could migrate to Stewart airport in upstate New York. The idea has not moved forward, which is hardly surprising, given that combination airlines do not want to split operations. Efforts in Los Angeles to shift freighter flights from LAX to Ontario airport a few years ago also proved futile.

For a pure-cargo airline, there could be benefits in a move to Stewart, one freighter executive said, provided this meant lower costs and faster transit times. On the other hand, interline activities would be out of the window.

By Ian Putzger

Air Freight Correspondent | Toronto