As a freight-only airport, Liège isn’t unique -
but it belongs to an exclusive club
The magic million
Luc Partoune, the Chief Executive of Liège airport, said that ABC
had been attracted by the airport’s cargo DNA and predicted that
the deal would help the airport to reach its 1m annual tonnage
target by 2020.
“Attracting both the AirBridgeCargo tender and Alibaba in
a matter of weeks has put us on the map for other companies
redesigning their approach to the European market. We’re getting
a lot of enquiries and working hard to attract new airlines and
add handling capacity,” adds Verhasselt.
Meanwhile, TNT has had its Euro Hub at Liège since 1998. At
75,000 square metres, it is one of Europe’s largest sorting hubs.
Now part of the FedEx Express network, the Liège hub handles
around 10,000 items daily and employs 1,700 people. Like
Alibaba, TNT takes advantage of Liège’s location at the heart of
the Amsterdam-Paris-Frankfurt “golden triangle”. In this dense
area of production, 66% of European freight uses airports and
Liège is less than a day by truck from the largest European cities.
In addition to the promise of unlimited slots, the likes of Alibaba,
TNT and ABC welcome the layout at Liège, which has been built
with the cargo facility at the centre.
“Shippers save time on taxi-ing and waiting on the runway.
They can dispose goods in
the warehouse immediately.
But if they don’t want a quick
turnaround, we can find a
later slot that works for them
and their customers,” explains
Verhasselt.
Verhasselt believes it’s
not possible to fulfill both
passenger flights and cargo
flights perfectly. For a long
time, Liège looked across at
its neighbours at Schiphol, in
Amsterdam, believing it was
managing to do everything
supremely well and had a
great mix of passengers, belly
cargo and freighters. But recent
developments have changed
the perception. “For a year
now, even their resources
have reached their limits
and the number of slots for
full freighter operations has
become a very serious issue.
We are reaping the benefits at
Liège,” he notes.
In flight clearance options
As part of the all-out focus
on cargo, Liège has set up
procedures for both customs
and sanitary documentation
clearance in flight. The
airport employs four specialist
handlers for pharmaceutical
products alone, all of whom
are certified for CEIV Pharma.
“We believe in the whole
chain being certified, including
the airline and the trucker. A
pharma shipper can clearly see
the commitment of everyone
in the supply chain to these
quality standards,” Verhasselt
says.
Liège promotes itself as
a specialist destination for
animal shipping and offers
facilities that few major
airports can match. A five-star
Horse Inn includes special
flooring to prevent injuries,
a pampering environment
that reduces stress and an
adjacent dormitory facility for
grooms. Most of the horses
are on their way to compete
in major global events, such
as the Olympic Games, or the
Longines Global Champions
Tour for top-level show
jumping. Around 3,000 horses
transit the airport every year,
as well as 1,500 cows.
A flexible infrastructure
means the airport can
handle one-off outside
charter projects. Handlers
are permitted to build
temporary cranes to load
large pieces of cargo on
to freighters. Last-minute,
urgent charity operations
can be accommodated more
easily than at large passenger
airports.
“When the Ebola crisis
hit West Africa, we played an
important role in providing
humanitarian aid. More than
a hundred wide-body aircraft
departed Liège, carrying about
90 tonnes of supplies each,”
Verhasselt recalls. Destinations
included Guinea, Sierra
Leone and Liberia, as well as
airports in Nigeria and Mali.
The supplies were used by
humanitarian organisations
including UNICEF, the Red
Cross and the World Health
Organisation. It’s not the first
time Liège’s flexibility has
helped in a humanitarian
crisis. Hundreds of tents were
flown to Turkey following
a severe earthquake and
supplies were sent out after the
tsunami in Thailand, as well
as the Haiyan typhoon that
devastated the Philippines.
In conclusion, with this
amount of interest in its
freight capability, it’s small
wonder that the passenger
equation at Liège takes second
place.
www.airlogisticsinternational.com February 2019 33
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