Clucking and bleating are part of the cacophony of loading cargo at the Sichuan Airlines’ air-cargo terminal at Chengdu. Th e cargo team’s afternoon shift is usually a busy time in the warehouse ramp area, where dozens of baskets are manhandled onto trailersready for the afternoon flights.
"We load about 4.5 tonnes of livestock per day to southern Chinese cities, especially down to Hainan Island," according to the terminal’s duty cargo manager.
Th e island resort on the south coast is a Mecca for holiday makers who want to get away from the bitter biting cold of the north. And as increasingly prosperous average Chinese get a better life style, a heavier wage packet, they want a holiday, about which their grandparents could only dream. Like everywhere else in the world, it’s a pleasant surprise to have food from the home province served on the restaurant table.
Th e spin-off effect to the airlines from this new affluence, and the Chinese’ perennial and passionate love affair with food, is that animals and vegetables that can’t live or be grown in the sub-topics are fl own down to the coast every day. SCAL’s cargo figures are on the rise, showing a 20 per cent increase over the previous year.
In comparison to the mighty fleets of Air China and China Southern, Sichuan Airlines is a flyweight with just 39 aircraft. Th is carrier ranks at 11th place for the carriage of cargo on the mainland. Total weight of all cargo and mail through Chengdu – listed at 6th slot in China in 2006 – at 268,000 tonnes, an up 17 per cent over the previous year.
A terminal with farmyard aroma
SCAL’s cargo and weighbridge area at Chengdu’ Shangliu International airport have a rather distinct aroma of the farmyard, with many different sounds coming from the bamboo crates. Take a peek into the brown bamboo latticed baskets and staring back at you are the eyes of chickens, ducks, goats, rabbits and frogs.
When asked if the livestock was containerised before into the aircraft, the duty cargo manager replied: "Containers are expensive, we use manpower and there’s no shortage of that in China. I am sure this way I can fi t more into the compartment. And also we would have to have spare empty containers at all the cities we fl y to in China ¨C a big financial outlay."
It’s a speedy operation with a huge labour team delegated to each flight. And with much bleating from the goats, and crowing from the chickens, those crates are handballed into the bellies of the A320s.
And in reverse, when the white-collar workers have returned to Chengdu after their holiday at the coast, they are now ordering and eating sea-fish and crab, which again helps to fi ll the northbound flights.
Chengdu has hub aspirations
Th is cargo boom has also benefitted Chengdu’s cargo terminal. Having just completed its first year of operations, Chengdu Aircargo Terminal (CAT) Ltd has exceeded original cargo throughput estimates for the first 12 months of operations.
Established in 2006, with operations commencing in March 2007, as a joint venture between Air China and the Sichuan Airports Group Authority, CAT is latching on to the ever increasing domestic and internationaltraffic flows.
The terminal’s manager, Huang Qiang said: "Cargo was 13 per cent more than what we had predicted. And we have had to increase our staffing level to cope for that extra traffic".
Official statistics for the whole airport forecast an increase of cargo, passengers, and flight movements of 17 per cent in the years ahead. Aiming to be main western hub "We want Chengdu’s Shangliu International Airport to be the biggest hub in west China," Huang went on to say. Th e city has a history of some 3,000 years as the natural gateway and transit point to the west, which itself has a population of some 300 million.
Th e company handles the cargo of eight domestic and international carriers at their new 20,000 square meters terminal which was constructed at the cost of two billion yuan (US$285 million), funded by the Sichuan Airport Group and the China Aviation Administration.
It comes fully equipped with three refrigeration rooms for horticultural produce, and for pharmaceutical cargo. Also on hand is an animal quarantine area. An apron, dedicated to all cargo aircraft is under construction, although at present time, freighters call here only on an ad hoc basis.
Local economy in pink of health Judging by the wide variety of cargo in the terminal, both inbound and outbound, the city’s economy is in the pink of health.
Products unheard of only a few years ago are now fl owing in and out of the airport. To meet the demand of the new up-and-coming Chinese middle class, for instance, pallet loads of Norwegian salmon are fl own in regularly, as also Italian garments and other luxury goods. In the export bays are crates of aircraft components, manufactured locally and destined for Airbus in France. Rudders for the new Boeing Dreamliner are also made in the city.
The spin off effect of the boom spirals down even to the other social groups. Th e province is known as the ¡®breadbasket of central China,’ and as Tibet has such a severe climate, where almost nothing can grow, local Chengdu farmers benefit, with trailer loads of fresh vegetables fl own daily to Lhasa, to be consumed largely by the hungrytourists.
Chengdu, being one of the four major shoe manufacturing cities on the mainland, also provides the terminal with cargo, with approximately 91 tonnes per day fl own from Shangliu to various Chinese destinations, both for local demand and for on-forwarding abroad by air or ship.
Competition for the new company comes in the form of the Chengdu Airport Authority which established a joint venture in 2004 with Menzies Aviation from the UK. Sichuan Airlines, a domestic carrier based at Shangliu continues to handle their own fleet of 39 aircraft.
Chengdu’s Shangliu International Airport is ranked as China’s sixth busiest, handling over 180,000 tonnes of cargo in 2006. With one runway and normal operating hours of 0600 ¨C 0200, flight movements are restricted to 500 per day, but on public holidays have often exceeded that limit. Construction of a second runway is due to begin this year.