Air freight is without doubt a huge global market and you can virtually send any item overseas using a freight service by air. Air freight is rapidly becoming the most essential and important of all freight services. While it is impractical to carry vehicles or heavy machinery in most cases, air freight is rapidly becoming the go-to solution for companies in the developing fields of engineering and biotechnology. The ability to send samples, products and other physical objects across the globe in a matter of hours, not days, offers an ideal solution to the basic problem of getting an item from the manufacturer to the customer.
But air freight isn’t just a solution for scientifically minded companies who need to move sample vials across continents. There are different modes of transport, and each mode has its own advantages and disadvantages. Air freight is often used for high value and low volume shipments. The common reasons why people using air freight and the advantages of air freight.
First is air freight is the fastest shipping method, when the goods need to be moved quickly, air freight is the best solution compared to sea freight or road transport. Goods can be sent by air to arrive the following day, which is a major advantage for those with urgent deliveries, as well as those with perishable goods that cannot be left for days in transit. Second, it can send the cargo almost anywhere because many airlines have a large network of destinations that covers almost the entire world. This means that you can send the shipment to nearly every destination. So, it is worldwide.
Third, air freight has high level of security and reduced risk of theft and damage because shipping by air offers the advantage of high level of security, as the airport safety controls over cargo are tightly managed. Tightly managed airport controls also reduce the cargo exposure to theft and damage. Unlike ground shipping, which has to take into account things like traffic, unplanned road-works, accidents and various other potential obstacles, air shipping is one of the safest methods. The longer that goods take to get to their destination, the more chance there is that something can go wrong along the way. Next are a several disadvantages of the air freight. Usually, the first disadvantages is about costs, for surely it is more expensive method of shipping.
This is due to fuel prices of cargo planes and numerous other factors. As goods are shipped quickly, this cost can be worth paying however, especially if it means saving you a sale by getting the goods to the customer on time. Another downside is that there is a limited amount of space that each plane is able to accommodation without overloading. This means that goods can be subject to size limits in the case of very heavy packages, oddly shaped or very large packages or other packages that take up more room than an average sized package. Weight and space requirements are set by regulatory bodies to limit what can and cannot be transported by air. If you need to ship large, heavy items, you may want to consider another method that is more suited to the size of your goods.
Also last but not least, the main disadvantage is the bad weather and it’s true that weather conditions affect road. For planes however, airports may shut down services during extremely bad weather, and as services are dependent on weather, this can cause unexpected delays when a sudden snowstorm hits. In some parts of the world, hurricanes and major storms are not uncommon either, which can also play havoc on shipping schedules. The best way to decide whether air freight is the right choice is to weigh up all the facts, consider the goods you are shipping and then choose the option that is the most cost and time effective.
