Two-runway Heathrow Airport will not be able to handle UK’s air cargo requirements in the future

Heathrow is one of the biggest working airports in the world and the largest in UK. It has two runways and five different terminals to handle passengers and cargo. In 2013 Heathrow airport was named as the world’s busiest airport because it handled record number of passengers. However in 2014, it came down to the second position behind Dubai International Airport.

Heathrow Terminal 4

Heathrow’s Terminal 4 has been especially designed to handle cargo operations. However, a cargo specialist from the Heathrow International cargo terminal has admitted that the Airport will soon become unable to fulfil UK’s cargo shipping need. The air freight growth rate is very high in Britain and people value the time rather than money.

Air Freight Conference

The Air Freight Conference session was held in Birmingham at Multimodal exhibition where the head of ground operations Nick Platts also addressed. He said that the capacity shortage in the two runway world is very dangerous and in future it is not going to change. Heathrow does not have space to build more cargo sheds and can’t handle more Air Cargo flights from the world. The only way to handle this problem is to make the ground processes more efficient.

Current Situation

Currently Heathrow uses old fashioned Horseshoe cargo facilities which are not up to the task. There is nothing available like e-freight technologies and the old process take more than six hours to complete the same process which can be completed in 30 minutes with the help of advanced technologies. Exports took even more up to nine hours to go through the airport.

Senior vice president of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol Cargo Enno Osinga said, “Europe’s third-largest cargo airport was not a destination, as we are serving customers in Germany, the UK and southern Europe, so we operate in a different market.”

He said that nine years ago Schiphol was not able to handle cargo but after changing their cargo handling process and making it more efficient they become third largest cargo handlers in Europe, without any support from government.

Heathrow can’t compete us until they modernize their processes, he added. Currently, customers can’t even call the cargo manager because the role doesn’t exist. One of the world’s busiest and largest airport is nowhere to be seen when it comes to cargo handling.