Impact of UAV on Air Cargo

This paper provides an assessment of the present UAV market and the way they will impact the Air cargo. It discusses the efforts made by the air cargo industry to embrace UAVs, analysis of existing UAV technology, safety and security considerations, environmental and airspace issues, and economic analysis for the usage of UAVs.

Running head: AIR CARGO
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Executive Summary
The UAV or the unmanned aerial vehicle or a drone is an aircraft that does not have any human
pilot. The UAS or the Unmanned Aircraft System includes various components such as the
UAV, communication systems and many others. These drones offer new opportunities for air
freight or cargo. IATA is presently trying to embrace the same through various activities. The
main aim of the paper is to provide an assessment of the present UAV market and the way they
will impact the Air cargo. It can be concluded that from the study that there are many ways in
which air cargo will be affected by the UAV.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
A review of industry efforts to make use of UAVs for air cargo................................................3
An analysis of existing UAV technology and developments in the next 10-15 years................5
An assessment of the safety and security considerations............................................................8
An assessment of environmental and airspace issues including recommendations....................9
An economic analysis for the usage of UAVs including demand and costs.............................10
An overall impact analysis for current air cargo operators........................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
Air Cargo refers to carriage of any commodities or people from one place to another
through air flights and may include air mail and much more. Air Cargo industry is one of the
industries that is presently trying to embrace the UAV because of the business opportunities
provided by the same. UAV or the unmanned aerial vehicle is an aircraft that works without any
pilot in board and may be operated by the pilot with the help of some remote control equipment’s
or even through some computer systems. The air cargo industry is presently trying to embrace
this approach for providing last mile services to its customers and many other purposes. The
UAV provides many opportunities to the cargo industry such as increasing the speed, reducing
the cost, managing the workforce and others (Alex and Vijaychandra 2016). UAV is presently
being used in many industries such as government organization, in media and advertisement, in
civil organization and others. The main aim of the paper is to analyze the way the Unmanned
aerial vehicles will affect the air cargo business (Baik et al. 2017). The paper will also discuss
about the efforts made by the air cargo industry to embrace the same, analysis of the present
UAV technology and expected improvements in the same. IATA is presently trying to embrace
the same through proper skills development, knowledge development and others related to the
same. Further various safety and security issues will be discussed, the environmental impact of
UAV in air cargo will also be discussed and many others.
Discussion
A review of industry efforts to make use of UAVs for air cargo
These unmanned aerial vehicles is entering various fields and growing at a very fast pace.
For instance it is being used in the civil world, they are used in fire fighting, entertainment and

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media and much more. These are also entering the airline industry. These provide enormous
opportunities to the airline industry of reducing the cost, increasing the speed and many more.
Some of the major business opportunities include ground operations and airport, goods
transportation and passenger transport (Kornatowski, Mintchev and Floreano 2017). In case of
ground operations and airport, the unmanned aerial vehicle can be used to carry out ground
safety checks; it can be used for the purpose of maintenance, for monitoring purposes, for
looking after the inventory control and other reasons. UAV’s role in goods transportation will be
that of transportation of special cargo and also general cargo in all the areas whether it is in rural
or urban areas. In future drones can be used to transport the passengers and therefore help in
travelling by air. IATA is focused on developing the standards and various other practises that
helps in proper operation of the Drones and thereby IATA is making efforts to make Drones or
the UAV a part of the infrastructure. The IATA provides for security and safety through its
operations, it helps in properly managing the air traffic management and it will provide
integrated operations by helping in carrying out both air and ground operations and will also
provide for cargo and passenger movement from one place to another (Fandetti 2017).
The world cargo by air traffic is expected to increase with a growth rate of 4% annually,
both air freight and air mail are expected to increase. Air cargo will also be affected by the e-
commerce such that there will be a growth of 20% in its market size by 2021. There is an
expected shift in the type of goods to be delivered by cargo shifting from special commodities,
more parcels to periods of more demands. There is a continuous change in the policies that affect
the air cargo are therefore the air cargo needs to be more data driven and technologically
advanced. This is where the need for changes in the business models, architectural designs and
process and other technological changes are needed (Morrell and Klein 2018). Therefore the air

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cargo industry is making an effort to become automated by the year 2030. For this purpose the
industry is making efforts to make use of automated warehouses, vehicles that are greener and
automated will be used for this purpose such as the UAV. Employees will be equipped with
proper tools and skills to be able to make use of the same. These are expected to increase the
productivity, efficiency and many more (Foster et al. 2018). Therefore the cargo industry is
trying to become automated and make use of unmanned aerial vehicle. The six main areas in
which the air cargo industry is trying to make use of is wearable’s and automated reality, drones
and other automated vehicles, automated systems and robotics, big data, greener and sustainable
buildings, IOT and other connected devices. With the help of these automations, the air cargo
industry will be able to carry out better operation’s in a day.

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An analysis of existing UAV technology and developments in the next 10-15 years.
Figure 1: Investment in drone hardware
Source: (www.statista.com 2019)
The drones are presently used by different industries including government agencies,
commercial industries and many others due to various advantages (Merkert and Alexander
2018). It helps in quick deliveries, reaching military bases that cannot be reached by human
beings and many more areas. Drones offer many uses to all the different industries such as
increasing productivity and efficiency, decreasing the cost of production, improving accuracy,
improving customer relations, and others. The present uses of the drone technology includes

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aerial photograph, shipping and delivery, it can be used in disaster management, rescue
operations, geographic mapping, for safety inspection, in unmanned cargo transport and various
other areas. Drone technology in military is one of the primary uses of drone and it is used as
target decoys, combat mission and it has become a part of military forces throughout the world.
Drones are also used for commercial uses such as in media and advertisement and various other
industries. The sales of civilian drones have increased causing increased need for safety and
security in order to avoid any form of collisions and many other forms of accident.

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Figure 2: Industries using Drone
Source: (www.statista.com 2019)
The above diagram shows the usage of drones by different industries.
Since the drone technology is growing so fast therefore the future drone technology is
continuously improving. Drone technology has different generations. In generation 1, remote
control is used, in generation 2, static design is there, video recording is done and much more.
There are four more generations like these and the current generation’s falls in 6th generation. In
the generation 7, various automated practises are used, there is payload and platform interchange
ability and various other activities are carried out in the generation 7. The 7th generation includes
robotics and drones.

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An assessment of the safety and security considerations
The use of unmanned aerial vehicle involves various safety, security and privacy issues.
One of the major security issues is the GPS system contained in the Drones. This technology
empowers the operator to fly the drone and at the same time it also gives them the power to
follow routes. There are various advantages of the same for different industries. However there is
various safety issues related to the GPS. While piloting a drone, an operator uses the GPS to fly
outside view and also above 400feet in the air. There can be safety issues related to the same
because the pilot cannot see anything and therefore cannot avoid any form of hazards. The UAV
equipment’s also have some security issues and privacy issues and there may be issues related to
protection rights. There are further many more issues of privacy that have been raised in the past
due to the cameras used, the video recording capability and others that is used by the UAV’s
such as the feature of facial recognition and others (Tobór, Barcik and Czech 2017). There can
be safety issues because of the fact that these drones do not often work well with the aircrafts.
This is because the drones cannot see the direction in which they are going and therefore the
chances of collisions are higher if the other airlines or aircrafts do not stay out of their way.
Moreover there can be issues related to their landing and for that proper programming has to be
done such that they do not land into other bystanders. These drones can also be used for illegal
purposes as these are like eyes in the sky and since there are some types of flyers that have their
heads in backside and therefore it is difficult to find why a particular a drone appears in a
particular location. There are many privacy issues. Soon after FAA modernization and reform act
2012, opened the floodgates. There are two main types of privacy objections such as someone is
continuously watching which is narcissistic and obtuse according to different people. Moreover
even if these UAV are being used to look inside of someone’s window it cannot be complained

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against because the federal government considers it as a hobby. Therefore the government cannot
go against its own regulations even it is causing some privacy issues. These also lead to public
nuisance sometimes because of the fact that cities cannot stop the flying of these drones except in
cases where it is causing noise or any form of hazard and any other activity that is legally
prohibited.
An assessment of environmental and airspace issues including recommendations.
In many areas drones are being introduced for delivery in place of any other form of
deliveries in order to deliver faster and it also consumes much less fuel as compared to any other
modes of delivery. However, it is necessary to assess their life cycle in order to understand their
environmental impact. Various researches have been conducted in this context in order to
understand the environmental impact and it was found that drone cargos are the most eco-
friendly methods of delivering goods and services (Rabta, Wankmüller and Reiner 2018). There
is however some environmental impacts related to production of different parts of the drone.
Some of the major impacts on the environment created by the different parts of these drones are
that of batteries, carbon fibres and it has an impact on the freshwater Eco toxicity. However,
besides these impacts the cargo drones offer many benefits such as reduction of carbon
footprints, speed delivery, and reduced cost of delivery. In case truck deliveries are used for this
purpose more quantity of goods can be carried that the cargo carrying drones but the
environmental impact is greater when compared to the environmental impact of the drones. In
order to shuttle goods properly between the distribution centres and with the focus on rural areas,
these drones are designed to land on water or take off vertically providing more flexibility. These
cargos can vary in size from small sizes to large sizes depending on the items to be delivered.

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Many companies have researched for years for developing the correct size of the drones with
proper capacity and these are expected to be introduced by 2020. For instance the drone
developed by Elroy Air wishes to be known for delivery of medical facilities and manage
disaster properly. The company is also deciding to enter into partnership with packaging
companies such as FedEx and others for the purpose of carrying package deliveries. In order to
completely reduce the environmental impact of these delivery drones the company needs to
produce the material for these drones in such a way that its impact can be reduced totally and
they can also try to create the material for the drones using recyclable material.
An economic analysis for the usage of UAVs including demand and costs.
The main issue with selecting an unmanned aerial vehicle as against manned aircraft shows
policy analysis. Efficiency is an important part of the policy analysis and a good efficiency
policy between the social costs and the social benefits as compared to any other alternatives.
Efficiency analysis needs to be understood in this context. The legitimacy of the allocate
efficiency is accepted by the analyst as the goal however, the analyst may or may not be willing
to monetize the impacts. One of the most important variations that exists between unmanned
aerial vehicle and manned aircraft in terms of efficiency analysis is that of a cost-benefit analysis
that is qualitative in nature provided the data on the subject has been obtained. Cost benefit
analysis considers the impacts of each of the alternatives however the analysts are not willing to
monetize the impacts. Incomplete qualitative cost benefit analysis is the most suitable technique
in this context. The market accessibility of these drones have increased because the investment
over the last 10yaers have been continuously increasing. The drone market size is expected to
increase for all- commercial purpose, consumer and military purposes.

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Figure 3: Market share of Drone in commercial, consumer and military markets
Source: (www.statista.com 2019)
An overall impact analysis for current air cargo operators.
There are many companies which are already using the drone delivery for the purpose of
providing last mile delivery to the customers of the organization. It has been analysed that drones
do not involve complex technology but rather they use technology that is presently being used by
many big companies such as Amazon and others and they are carrying out research and
development for this purpose which has made the fact clear that the technology of drones is not
difficult and rather it will help in reducing the cost and increasing the overall speed (Simon and
Mays Omnitracs 2019). In many areas where human being find it difficult to provide
medications the drones are providing the same and it is expected to provide medications in
different parts of the world (Priest, Etak Systems 2019). There is a need for environmental

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friendly ways of achieving delivery of parcels in most of the cities across the world. This is so
because if cars were used for the same purpose it causes lot of pollution and also leads to
congestion on the roads and also takes time. These drones also help in providing last mile
delivery. These drones are electric vehicles that have rotors and that can help in delivering cargo
from one location to another. These can be automatically operated or may be manually piloted
and remotely piloted (www.researchgate.net 2019). However there are certain hurdles that these
drones are presently facing and that needs to be removed in order to improve their efficiency.
These hurdles include regulations related to cargo drones. Cargo drones can get hacked due to
their GPS system and that can cause various types of security issues and others. People need to
accept these drones for these to operate properly.

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Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be concluded that the UAV will affect the air cargo
business in many ways. The paper aims at showing the present UAV technologies being used in
the industries and the future of these technologies. The paper also analyzes the environmental
impact of these drones as compared to others methods of delivery. The paper also evaluates the
safety and the security issues related to the use of cargo drones and the potential risks they may
have on the customer’s privacy, security and others. The paper discusses about the present
techniques that have been applied by the air cargo industry to embrace the cargo drone delivery.
Various industries have started using these techniques for achieving last mile delivery, reducing
cost, increasing production and many others.

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