IF SUCCESS in the freight industry means “speed and accuracy and no glitches”, then Express Air Services takes the cake. “Our success in the domestic market has been exceptional given our minimal service failures despite dealing with a volume of a million kilograms a month or some 140000 items (20 000 waybills).” says MD Francois Wolmarans. Last week he demonstrated to FTW an internal system for measuring the company’s service failure rate on items. It showed 31 ‘discrepancies’ over the past month on 20 000 waybills or a ‘failure rate’ of 0.15%. These internal ‘discrepancies’ are faults such as a misrouting or failure to deliver an express item on time, logged on daily schedules from each airport. Other examples range from bad packaging that should not have been accepted as freight to freight bumped off a flight due to late loading. Some of these were clearly incidents where an internal control process was not followed, but may have had no effect on the customer service delivered. The company provides specialised cargo handling services to international airlines operating into South Africa. This includes the receipt of freight, its warehousing and delivery if inbound, and the receipt, palletising and ramp handling supervision up and until loading onto the aircraft if outbound. This service is similarly provided by its domestic network of branches. “We serve over 100 passenger flights a day, about 35% of the domestic market share of handling day-time freight,” he says.”EAS manages all cargo handling activities on behalf of Comair, 1Time Airlines and Kulula.com with SAA Cargo as the company’s main competitor.” He says 75% of the domestic freight market is night-time freight and run by SAA Cargo. “We find ourselves in a highly competitive market. Our market share is significant given the competitive disadvantage that EAS has in terms of not operating night freighter aircraft.”
