Domestic Air Cargo Industry in Australia - Bureau of Infrastructure ...

Occasional Paper 87Information on the major airports used for the movement of domesticair cargo in 1984-85 is presented in Table 2.4. This furtherillustrates the importance of east coast and Tasmanian operations andthe significant directional imbalances in traffic. Melbourne, Sydneyand Brisbane together handled 62 per cent of domestic airline cargo in1984-85 and the two Tasmanian airports accounted for an additional 13per cent.COMPETING SERVICESThe major competitor in the markets serviced by air transport isexpress road services. In recent years road transport operators haveattracted a substantial proportion of overnight freight from airtransport services on routes between adjacent cities. This hasparticularly affected the Melbourne-Sydney and Melbourne-Adelaideroutes. Factors in the growth of competition from road transportoperators include improvements to the national highway system andlimited increases in road freight rates. It appears that the traffictransferred to road transport has generally comprised lower ratedi tems.The competition from road transport has been less effective onservices between non-adjacent cities and on longer routes such asAdelaide-Perth where the transit time advantages of air transport arestill significant. In addition, the speed of air transport hasenabled it to retain late lodgment express traffic on routes betweenadjacent cities.There has also been significant, growth of combined road and airservices. In these operations, the freight is moved by road on onesector of the journey and by aircraft on the other sector.The development of competing road services has been encouraged by theactivities of freight forwarders. These organisations consolidatecargo from various shippers and use the mode that most efficientlymeets the delivery schedules required by their customers. It isreportedly common on some routes for freight accepted by forwardersfor air movement to be sent by road (Australian Flying 1986, 47;Transport and Distribution Letter 1986a, 5). One observer has claimedthat each night up to 40 tonnes of freight lodged for air expressdelivery on the Sydney-Melbourne and Melbourne-Adelaide routes isinfact moved by fast road vehicles (Age 1986, 3). Several organisationscontacted during the study also stated that the use of road vehiclesto transport cargo lodged as air freight is a comnon practice. Suchactivities would reflect the ability of road transport operators to12