Japan Airlines does not fly to Warsaw, but that does not prevent it from offering the Polish capital as a destination to its clientele in the coming year. The lift between Tokyo and Warsaw comes courtesy of LOT Polish Airlines, which will mount direct flights between the two cities in January.

The B787 Dreamliner that LOT is going to field on the route three times a week will give JAL Cargo 15 tonnes to fill on each flight.

For the Japanese airline, the newly minted partnership with its Polish counterpart brings a new destination, while LOT’s cargo management can look forward to generating volume on its flights out of a new market without having to invest in a sales presence or the other elements associated with cargo. Besides selling the lift, JAL Cargo takes care of the ground handling in Tokyo.

JAL executive officer, cargo and mail, Tsuyoshi Yamamura said that the partnership gives his outfit access to central and eastern Europe, while LOT can connect with JAL’s flights to and from cities in China and other Asian countries.

According to Mariusz Kuczek, director of cargo at LOT, exports from Japan to Poland are close to  €1.1 billion (US$1.2 billion) a year, while eastbound flows exceed €1.5 billion (US$1.7 billion).

“It is a huge potential that we are dealing with,” he said.

More airlines are teaming up as cargo executives are increasingly looking beyond their own company to grow their business. Striving to meet customers’ demand for global reach, they seek to boost their network without investing in planes and infrastructure at new destinations, something that their boards would be prone to veto anyway.

China Southern Airlines signed a cargo partnership agreement with Air France-KLM in September. Through the deal, the Guangzhou-based carrier gains access to the North and South Atlantic markets as well as to Africa, via the respective Air France and KLM hubs in Paris and Amsterdam. The European tandem can offer their clientele the main cities in Australia through China Southern as well as main deck lift to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City on their partner’s freighters serving Vietnam.

China Southern’s alignment with Air France-KLM follows an agreement that the Chinese carrier’s cargo management signed just one month earlier with IAG Cargo, the freight arm of the combined British Airways-Iberia enterprise. Both sides extend their reach with this deal. For the European carrier, it means confirmed space on China Southern flights serving a number of destinations, including Urumqi, Auckland, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth.

“IAG Cargo has a strong global network reach and will prove an important partner in helping us to connect our customers with markets in Europe, the Americas and elsewhere,” commented Zhao Fengsheng, senior vice president of cargo at China Southern.

IAG has been busy bolstering its ‘Partner Plus’ programme of cargo alignments with other carriers. The initiative boasts confirmed lift as well as tracking from origin to destination. According to IAG, there is also a recovery guarantee that will ensure that freight will be recovered within 48 hours in the event of an operational offload.

The programme now comprises of seven carriers – besides China Southern, IAG has struck such partnerships with Qatar Airways, Japan Airlines, the Avianca group, American Airlines, and Finnair. IAG has now signalled that the phase of network building may be complete.

“With the addition of China Southern, our programme now offers our customers extended network reach across all the world’s key markets. Our focus is now shifting away from adding new members and onto deepening our commercial relationships with the existing members of the programme,” said Steve Gunning, CEO of IAG Cargo.

The European carrier took one large step in that direction in July when it beefed up its partnership with Finnair Cargo. The pair announced a twice-weekly freighter link between their respective home bases in London and Helsinki with an A300-600F aircraft. It supplements Finnair’s seven and IAG’s two daily narrowbody passenger flights on the sector.

This marked the second partnership of IAG with another carrier that involves a freighter, following a deal with Qatar Airways struck last year that sees IAG take out a block space agreement on the Middle Eastern carrier’s freighter from Hong Kong to London via Doha. That deal was extended indefinitely in August – just one year after it was first signed.

The Finnair-IAG freighter operation is not run by either carrier, though. It is a block space agreement on an A300 freighter that is operated by DHL. This emulates the approach Finnair has taken to the Helsinki-Brussels route, where it has signed up for confirmed space on a DHL A300F.

China Southern and Air France-KLM have also signalled their intention to take their new alignment beyond interlining. In a joint statement on their new partnership the carriers declared that they plan to intensify their co-operation on express and mail premium products in response to the substantial increase in e-commerce trade between Asia and Europe.

By Ian Putzger

Air Freight Correspondent | Toronto