The transportation charges by air are generally higher than by surface or sea. However, such charges are only part of the long list of all the costs of distribution. The advantages of airfreight will be the combination of the following,
- Speed and Frequency: The most important factors that a customer will consider are no doubt speed and frequency, especially if he has some urgent shipments.
- Reliability: Owing to the high cost of the airport facilities, there comes a need for maximum utility. As such, the arrival and departure times of flights are highly reliable.
- Network of Destination and Interline Facilities: Nowadays, there are many airlines that have a large network which covers almost the entire world. Airlines also accept each others’ air waybills and that means the shipper can send his shipment to nearly every destination using the same air waybill.
- Warehousing: Using air cargo, the customer has less need for local warehousing and expensive stocks.
- Financial Constraints: As air cargo is much faster than surface or sea transportation, it can free the capital which would otherwise be tied up in the long transit time for the goods to arrive at the buyer’s premises before the payment can be realized by the seller.
- Insurance Premium: The insurance premium is lower for air cargo as the transportation time for air cargo is comparatively short. Further, the airports are considered high security areas, thus the lower premiums.
- Less Packing Required: As the security conditions at airports are good, aircrafts requires dedicated handling during loading and unloading, less packing materials are required when goods are transported by air. This brings about savings for the user in terms of costs as well as time to provide services for the additional packing.