APA Issue 1, 2021
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES Vivian Lau, executive director of Hong Kong cargo handling giant, Hactl, looks back on a tough year for aviation and hopes for better things for the industry in 2021.
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o say that 2020 was an extraordinary year for air cargo and the aviation industry would be an understatement.
After a promising start with solid cargo volumes, we began to hear increasingly alarming reports about the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus on the Chinese mainland, and the threat of transmission beyond its borders.
Two major types of cargo emerged in 2020: personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical supplies, and IT equipment: both for home working and for home entertainment (such as gaming consoles).
At that stage, we did not even know whether COVID could be transmitted from human-to-human, nor its mortality rate. However, Hactl identified the potential risk of service failure in the event of staff infections, so we took a number of preventive measures to ensure staff safety.
PPE handling was not without challenges: the initial supply shortage gradually improved after Chinese factories resumed production, but then Chinese Customs imposed export controls on PPE shipments. Some hand sanitisers were re-classified as dangerous goods, so required special handling, too.
Every person visiting our SuperTerminal 1 facility at Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) was temperaturemonitored before being granted entry and all 2,400 staff were issued with face masks and sanitiser. The top priority was to protect staff and maintain Hactl’s operational stability and service standards. These steps initially looked like an over-reaction, but
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events soon proved their value, and it’s thanks to our decisive and early actions that Hactl has been virtually untouched by COVID-19.
Our charter broker friends told us of charter rates that tripled overnight, and how they scrambled to get every available aircraft into the air. In Hong Kong, Hactl saw the arrival of increasingly exotic big birds – such as Boeing’s Super Guppy (normally used for carrying wing assemblies), the Antonov An-225, and several military transports.
