Omicron is a threat to the air cargo industry

The rapidly spreading virus has long since jumped the airport fences and is threatening air cargo handling due to increasing infection rates among ground personnel. To avoid disruptions, or even the complete gridlock of supply chains, ground handling agents, in coordination with airport management, should be urgently implementing impactful steps to stop the Omicron or Delta variant from spreading.
Frankfurt-based Winfried Hartmann of Prime Aircargo Services presents his in-depth thoughts illustrating how an effective strategy could work.

Daunting challenges loom
Logistics is a key part of the critical infrastructure. Without logistics, there are no consumables in supermarkets, and gas stations soon run out of fuel, as witnessed in the UK. The same goes for air freight, which would collapse if infection rates among ground handling staff were to go through the roof. Particularly sensitive and temperature-critical global supply chains would come to a standstill. No doubt, a horror scenario, but unfortunately a realistic one if unvaccinated ground handlers continue to remain unwilling to get the jab.
If vaccination rates among floor staff do not dramatically improve within the next couple of weeks, cargo flows risk being disrupted by Omicron-infections. Absenteeism rates of 30-50% of operational personnel at a major freight terminal would significantly interrupt processes, jeopardizing the entire supply chain. Partial standstills and severe backlogs would be the result.

Anti-Covid-19 recipe
So, what is air freight doing to become resilient against the pandemic and its different waves? To simply wait and hope that everything will not turn out as badly as predicted, is not the best idea. It is far smarter to prepare for a worst-case scenario.
First, companies should do their utmost to increase their employees' acceptance of vaccination. In many cases, the obstacles to vaccination are not fundamental, but simply because there is no medical service nearby. Language problems are another obstacle. It would help if there was an in-house doctor on site to minimize existing thresholds fears, upping the vaccination rate.
Next, all employees could be assigned to fixed groups that belong to a certain shift and always work together in the same floor area. Mixing operational forces should be avoided because it supports the spread of the virus. However, a critical point are unavoidable contacts between pick-up and delivery personnel and delivery and collection personnel, for which no certificates are required when stepping on a warehouse ramp.
Finally, it would be essential to organize long-term shift planning of ground handling personnel and prevent staff from arranging to swap shifts.

Implementing “corona officers”
The highest risk factor for infection is private behavior outside the workplace. If work teams are formed, at least the traceability of infection chains would be possible, preventing the further spread of the virus, hence avoiding the contagion of most if not all employees.
It would be helpful, if ground handling agents would introduce a designated “corona officer” who informs and looks after the health of the employees. At large hub airports, these corona officers should become members of a crisis team to better assess the infection situation and coordinate counter steps if needed.
These thoughts may seem exaggerated, but with increasing infection numbers in the air cargo industry, one should be well prepared to deal with the virus in a resilient manner. Incidentally, one of the colleagues quoted at the beginning of this article went to get vaccinated the very day after his soccer club told him that his teammates would no longer allow him in without a jab. Sometimes social pressure also helps.

Winfried Hartmann, Head of Strategic Planning, Prime Aircargo Services GmbH

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