Airfreight and the Economy

So much has happened in the world over the past few years that economic issues have come up for almost every aspect of the supply chain. One of the hardest hit has been the airline industry. For many suppliers, as well as retailers, shipping via airfreight is considered a luxury; something only to be used in a pinch or with an intensely urgent shipment. There are very few industries that can effectively afford to ship via airfreight as their chief mode of transportation in importing and exporting. Most ommodities are too large or too heavy for the costs to make sense even with the benefits of a much quicker transit time. In fact, even people with the smaller and easily manageable commodities will pay an extremely higher price when shipping by air which is why it can many times be considered a last resort. Of course there are also some companies that find it worth the additional costs. The problem is that with the economic downturn, many of those companies are unwilling or unable to bare the additional costs and the airline industry has suffered as a result. The other issue for airliners is that they need to balance their trade lanes differently than other transportation companies. Many airliners ship cargo pallets on the same planes as they do passengers which can be a whole different consideration. This means that they have to balance between their thriving passenger destinations and their thriving cargo destinations to maximize their profits. As a result their economic issues also depend on more than the retail and wholesale companies, but also the general public to determine their best trade lanes. Unfortunately for airlines, this can become a greater hit to their bottom line.