Management of Air Cargo in Rural Areas - Challenges and Turnaround Activities

Management of Air Cargo (ECAL 103)
Assignment 1
Introduction
The present report is going to be based on the video "Featured Documentaries - Risking
it all -The daredevils pilots of Columbia" which will help in acquiring an in-depth details of
transporting cargo and passengers in rural areas through air. Following are the few answers
of the questions that are based on the selected video.
1. What are the challenges of delivery of air cargo to the remote and rural villages?
Delivering air cargo to remote and rural villages involves a lot of risks which makes
it one of the most challenging jobs of a pilot. Unlike the commercial airport, the runway
for landing in the rural villages are built over a plain land without any concrete making it
an uneven surface. This makes it difficult for the pilot to execute a landing in the rural
area. New aircraft prototype cannot be utilised since rural area airports have no airstrips
and brakes are on full while landing which means heavy planes would skid off more than
a small aircraft since it maintains a higher speed as compared to old aircraft [1]. Also,
there are no such radio towers or professionals to guide them through the landing
procedure.
The aircraft and the engine that is used for such purpose are as old as 80 years and
the latest technology that are used are from 1982 prototype [2]. Moreover, the aeroplanes
that are used for delivering cargo and passengers in Colombia served as the warplane
before. Also due to the same reason, the aircraft carrier can only carry a limited amount
of cargo. There is no restriction on the items which means starting from animals,
flammable materials and illegal stuff everything is carried in this cargo which increases
the risk. Rural village's children gather around an aircraft when it lands in their area. This
becomes dangerous for the pilot to take off from that area when children run around
them. Many accidents and deaths are also reported while delivering cargo and passengers
due to harsh weather. As the aeroplanes pass through dense jungles and deep mountains
the emergency landing are certainly impossible and are vulnerable to disastrous accident.

2. Identify any three ‘turnaround’ activities and describe how the operations differ
from a major commercial airport but yet still work.
The turnaround activities that were observed from the video of "The daredevils pilots
of Columbia", included no radio stations for pilots to assists in landing, the prototype
utilised for transportation through air is as old as two to three decades and the breakdown
of the aircraft are too frequent and cause the delay in the take-off for as long as two
weeks. The main difference of the operation between the commercial airport and rural
area airport is the lack of strict management and also less funding from the government
[4]. The pilots of the aircraft in the rural areas are not paid when they don't fly and
therefore often are unpaid due to long maintenance hours or long passenger and cargo
filling frequency.
The major commercial airports consist of control towers that are not present in the
rural areas and they are non-towered due to which the pilots have to rely on intuition, the
weather condition and their experience to land over a rural area airport runway. This still
works since there are not much aircraft flying at that height at a single time which makes
the traffic very smooth and also the pilots are experienced enough to land in such
runways since a long period of time.
There is still less number of passengers and cargos to transport within rural areas. As
a result, the flights only take off when the passengers and cargo are full and make it
impossible to run in a planned schedule. Moreover, during repairs in a commercial
airport, the parts of the plane are often taken from their main body but the rural airports
ground staff works while it is attached in the aircraft body [3]. When it is not possible to
fix, the main engine is taken out and sent in the main workshop which takes from 1 week
to 3 weeks to repair. The flight schedule gets disturbed and delayed which annoys the
passengers and also no compensations are made, unlike a commercial airport. As the
number of passengers is very less and the frequency of cargo transfer are also low, this
makes it ideal for the rural airports to function.
3. Explain why the Captain was worried that the cargo agent might be dishonest.
Unlike the commercial airport, the rural area airports do not have any management or
system to maintain the cargo procedure. A single cargo agent is solely responsible for
managing the whole operation of cargo starting from identifying the product category to
weighing the cargo products and even allow illegal and flammable materials to be
carried. From the video of “The Daredevils' pilots of Columbia”, it was observed that the