Challenges, Operations, and Safety in Air Cargo Management Report

This report examines the challenges and operational aspects of air cargo management, focusing on the transportation of cargo and passengers in rural areas. Based on the video "The Daredevil Pilots of Columbia," the report addresses the difficulties of delivering air cargo to remote villages, including the lack of infrastructure, aging aircraft, and safety concerns related to dangerous goods like fuel. It identifies turnaround activities in rural airports and contrasts them with major commercial airports. The report also analyzes the risks associated with dishonest cargo agents and describes the handling requirements for transporting dangerous goods by air. Additionally, it provides a SWOT analysis for an airline operating the DC-3, offering a comprehensive overview of the industry's challenges and opportunities. The report utilizes references to support the analysis.

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
cargo agent was often misleading the people who were putting their cargo product in the
aircraft. For personal gain, the cargo agent lied about certain product weights to charge
the people more [2]. Also, the aircrafts used for transporting cargo have capacity much
less than a commercial aircraft. Captain of the aircraft was worried that cargo agent
might be dishonest while loading the cargo products in the aircraft and exceed the
marked limit in order to gain more tariffs over the goods. The materials included starting
from grocery, flammable materials, animals and also illegal drugs. The cargo agent could
risk the aircraft into accidents if he acts dishonestly towards his duty and manipulates the
cargo weights to be more than permitted to carry.
4. Towards the end of the video, the pilots transported a shipment of fuel. Describe the
handling requirements when transporting Dangerous Goods like fuel by air.
The handling of dangerous goods like fuel and transporting it through the means of
air are heavily challenging and involves a lot of risks. The video showed that while
filling the cargo with high combustion fuel in an aircraft, any spark from any electronic
items would create a flame which could burn the whole place down. While flying in the
air, an onboard mechanic is always present to look after the cargo situation [2]. As a
precautionary measure, the rear door of the aircraft is removed. This is done since a
small spark, or short circuit or violent bump could blow everything up and it is important
to keep the area well ventilated. They have to keep front and end of the cargo ventilated
as it helps in dissipating fumes by avoiding building up gas in any area [2]. The pilots
have to be extra cautious while transporting these dangerous goods since there is no
support from any radio towers to assist in landing and the airstrips are missing. While
carrying such amount of flammable materials they cannot risk to create any violent bump
otherwise it can blow away the whole aircraft.
Conclusion
From the completed report it can be conferred that transporting air cargo and
passengers in rural areas is a great challenge as it involves numerous risks unlike
commercial airport. Absence of airstrip runway and control towers creates the landing
most troublesome. The report outlined three turnaround activities from the video which

still works and also pointed out the handling requirements while transporting dangerous
goods like combustible fuel through air cargo in rural areas.

References
[1] Allaz, Camille. History of air cargo and airmail from the 18th century. Google
Consultant, 2005.
[2] Featured Documentaries - Risking it all - The daredevil pilots of Colombia (2012)
Accessed on 20/05/2019 [Streaming Video: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xr74kx]
[3] Hall, Randolph W. Alternative access and locations for air cargo. No. FHWA/CA/OR-
2002/13,. METRANS Transportation Center, 2002.
[4] Rasker, Ray, Patricia H. Gude, Justin A. Gude, and Jeff Van den Noort. "The economic
importance of air travel in high-amenity rural areas." Journal of Rural Studies 25, no. 3
(2009): 343-353.