Air Freight Past, Present, Future
Christopher N Hall
Wilmington University

Air Freight Past, Present, Future
Air accounts for 1.5 percent of all freight y weight transported around the world, but it is worth 30% of the total freight value. From these numbers it is tempting to say that only high end commodities are moved by air and heavier and lower cost ones are moved by other means like ship, train and truck. You may assume this, but the ever changing air freight world is a fluid economy and sometime things fly because it is better to keep the planes moving instead of just sitting on the ground.
History of Air Cargo
Even before there were airplanes in the sky, mail was being moved by balloons, dirigibles and ravens. The first cargo moved by aircraft occurred on 7 November 1910 when a few bolts of silk were transported by air from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio. Phillip Orin Parmelee used a Wright Brothers Model B to travel 65 miles carry 200 pounds of silk for the opening of a store. It was the first cargo only flight that was commissioned by a merchant solely for the transport of goods. Tis was also one of the first times multimodal transport was used to include aircraft since it was first moved by car. In 1911, the united states postal office experimented with the moving of mail by way of air and Germany followed in 1912. It wasn’t until 1925 before air mail was a regular service.
World war 2 helped increase the freight movement by using large scale cargo was moved by C-46 and C-47’s to help support the war effort in India and China also known as “Flying The Hump”. Over 650,000 tons of cargo was transported between India and southern China between the years 1942 and 1945. Later from 1948 to 1949 the largest airlift in history occurred to support the blockaded city of Berlin, Germany.
Wide body jets that were introduced in the 1970’s helped move air cargo into the future with the introduction of the Boeing 747. This was one of the first times that the aviation industry chose size over speed to increase the performance of shipments. Douglas and Lockheed started a three engine wide bodied craft, the Dc-10 and the L-1011. These aircraft were only being used for passenger service until Lufthansa flew the first 747 freighters in April 1972 between Frankfort and New York. When using this aircraft, it increases the volume of freight by a factor of 2.7.
By 2012, there were 1738 freighters in worldwide operation. 37% of these were large wide-body aircraft, thirty-six percent were medium bodied and 27% were standard body air frames with the ability to carry less than 45 tons. Boeing projects the demand for world freighter fleet to increase to almost 3,200 planes by 2031.

Resources

World Air Cargo Forecast. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.boeing.com/resources/boeingdotcom/commercial/about-our-market/cargo-market-detail-wacf/download-report/assets/pdfs/wacf.pdf

C. A. (2005). History of Air Cargo and Airmail from the 18th Century. Google Consultant.