With immediate effect, forwarding agent Senator International has increased the number of freighter operations linking Hahn Airport in Germany with Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, from formerly 4/7 to daily. Although the Hamburg-based logistics company does not mention the name of its customer in its notification, it is no secret that car manufacturer BMW is the initiator of the additional flights.
The figures are quite impressive. Last year, BMW’s manufacturing plant at Spartanburg, USA, produced 411,620 cars: the largest number in the 25-year history of the company’s U.S. subsidiary. A stunning 70% of their South Carolina built X models are exported to 125 different countries. Since 1994, BMW has invested US$10.6 billion in its Spartanburg plant, employing more than 11,000 people.
Two-way traffic
The constant supply of parts and components is paramount to keeping the ball rolling at all times. Many of these stems from BMW’s main plant located in Munich, Bavaria. From there, they are
trucked 474 km to Frankfurt-Hahn Airport, to be loaded on board a Jumbo 747-400 freighter aircraft operated by Air Atlanta Icelandic on behalf of lessor Magma Aviation. It is two-way traffic
guaranteeing high loads on west- and eastbound flights.
BMW partner, Senator International, exclusively manages the handling areas on both sides of the North Atlantic, enabling tailored and fast throughput times. Pre-carriage and on-carriage concepts
in the USA and Europe round off the service to clients.
This collaboration between the agent and its prime customer, BMW, exists since 2016 and has proved its worth. Otherwise the car manufacturer would not have increased the volume of air transports
in close collaboration with its logistics service provider. Particularly at times like these, “our customers need a strong partner at their side who can react flexibly and offer planning
reliability for transports especially from and to North America," says Tim-Oliver Kirschbaum, CEO of Senator International.
Welcome news
For Frankfurt-Hahn airport, whose freight business has not really been thriving recently in the face of the many economic and political crises, Senator’s three additional cargo flights are very
welcome news. “Unlike large airports, we design our processes to be very customer-centric. Thanks to short distances and limited complexity, users are offered extremely fast processing times
for their shipments. And - most importantly - we are open 24 hours a day, allowing cargo airlines high operational flexibility,” states CEO Christoph Goetzmann
These and other advantages compensate for the time losses caused by trucking most of the goods from Munich to Hahn and conversely in case of imports coming from the USA, he reasons.
Dachser widens charter program
Similar to Senator International, Dachser Air & Sea Logistics has also expanded its flight offerings by adding weekly rotations on the Frankfurt-Chicago route to its existing flight program,
operated by a Cargolux B747-400F. The service, kicked off last week, is part of the agent’s current ‘Premium Charter Flight’ initiative to minimize the supply chain disruptions caused by the
coronavirus.
Heiner Siegmund
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