YYC Cargo is business (more than) usual

Summary: YYC is moving critical goods daily to help slow the spread of COVID-19 and help frontline workers. While many industries are being challenged, Air Freight continues to move essential supplies.

With the decrease in passenger flights, cargo is in the spotlight. YYC continues to ship and receive essential medical supplies (respirators, Personal Protection Equipment and test kits), pharmaceuticals/medicine, food and other critical goods daily. If you’ve ordered anything off Amazon, it has more than likely come through one of our Air Cargo partners.

YYC has seen a 17 per cent increase in Dedicated Cargo Landings (DCL) in Q1 2020 over last year (1,155 DCL in Q1 over 987 in the same period last year).

While we've all sat in a commercial passenger airplane, did you know that the belly of the plane is not just full of bags? There is cargo below referred to as ‘belly cargo.’ Pre-COVID, YYC averaged about 30 per cent belly cargo as we are more of a main deck freighter airport, meaning most of our cargo is sent on commercial air freighters where the cargo is packed on the upper deck.

With COVID-19 grounding most airline fleets, the belly cargo that usually flies on commercial passenger planes is being redirected onto commercial air freighters. This reduction in belly capacity has caused freighter demand to soar. Airlines are starting to repurpose passenger planes to fly cargo to take advantage of the increased demand for freighters. The levels of goods passing though the cargo facilities are comparable to the holiday season and aren't slowing down.

YYC is the ideal gateway for air cargo shipments to and from western Canada due to our access to highways and railways. The Global Logistics Park at YYC is an enormous trade development site that occupies over 330 acres of land. The cargo industry provides over 5,300 full-time jobs and more than $500 million of economic output.

Thank you to all the people that work in cargo for keeping us connected to help us fight this pandemic.