Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to the Freight Buyers Club. I'm here today with David Sheppard, who's the CEO of IAG Cargo. Welcome to the Freight Buyers Club, David.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Thank you very much for having me on, Mike.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: We're here today with quite a momentous launch today.
This is a unique partnership between IAG Mass Cargo and Qatar Cargo, which you claim will be the largest combined cargo network ever attempted. You're promising seamlessly integrated operations, if I followed correctly.
Where are you covering? What does this look like for customers? Who are your target customers and when will you launch?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Cracky, that's a lot of questions in one go. In terms of what we'll cover, we'll cover the globe, Mike.
The other two partners, Malaysia and Qatar, are very strong in Asia. Qatar, in fact, are strong pretty much everywhere. Strength in Africa, strength in Europe as well. Our particular strength is into the Americas as well as into Africa. So we covered over 70 points across the Americas, both North, Central, South America.
So as a partnership, we're fairly omnipresent where we honestly cover the globe. And we say it's the first partnership because nobody really ever has properly seamlessly integrated their operations. And what's important for us, for our customers is that from booking, from tracking, from a ground operations point of view, whether you're buying on Malaysian, Qatar or iag, you get that same service the whole way from the start to the end of your journey.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Can you give us any tangible speeds or transparency benefits that customers, shippers, forwarders, whoever they may be, what sort of benefits will they see?
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Well, they certainly see speed benefits because we will treat the transfer of cargo at our hubs in exactly the same way, from a partner aircraft to our own aircraft in exactly the same way as it would be if it were two of our own aircraft today. That's certainly not something that's possible today.
So that's certainly a speed benefit. I think from a transparency point of view, being able to see your tracked information all the way through from start to the end of the journey, regardless of which airline it's on, is again, a tangible benefit that hasn't been there before. And we intend to put a loyalty program off over the top of this that doesn't exist within the industry with our market leading Avios program as well.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: I'll come back to Avios in a minute. Can you give us an idea of how this partnership will work, this combined network will work where maybe people would say other cargo alliances previously haven't worked?
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Certainly just connecting Asia with Latin America as an example will happen in a seamless way other people connect Asia to Latin America, but the sheer number of choices that we'll be able to bring the customer will be unparalleled out there. So that's one very significant benefit. And as I say, going back to the seamless operations, doing so across different airlines in a seamless manner, just isn't done out there today.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: And you mentioned Avios. How does that work for your freight customers?
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Well, it's going to work in exactly the same way as it does for passenger customers today, where customers will be rewarded for their loyalty, will have the opportunity to redeem their points on any range of different reward mechanisms, whether it be flights, whether it be hotels, car hire, whatever they choose to, and they'll even actually be able to buy freight with those Avios points in the future as well. So a range of opportunities for them.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: And just finally, David, we heard from the World Food Programme today at the launch.
How exactly will this benefit humanitarian logistics? Obviously, air cargo is a big part of most of those sorts of operations.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Look, this is a partnership with purpose, Mike, it really is. And central to that is our commitment to the World food programme of 1,000 tonnes of free air freight. It's a great pride for me. I've worked in the industry for a very long time. Whenever there is a humanitarian disaster somewhere that is difficult to reach around the world, whether it be Haiti, whether it be in China, it is inevitably air cargo that gets the resources that are required, whether that be food or other humanitarian aid, to the point of consumption and need. And that is the only way that that can happen. So it's a point of pride and it's a great point of pride for us in this partnership that we're working with the word food programme to deliver that for them.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: And just one more final one, the start date. It's Q4, I think you said when exactly in Q4. And is this a rollout or is it, you know, everything starts at the same time.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: It'll be a rollout in as much as it will roll out over the countries that we have ATI antitrust immunity on, which will be an extensive part of the globe from day one. But there will be other countries along the way that get added into that, but it'll be a start of Q4, we hope.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: David Shepherd, CEO of IAG Cargo, thanks for joining me today on Freight Buyers Club.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Thanks, Mike, thanks for having me.
