Polar goes for growth
16 / 05 / 2024
Photo: Polar Air Cargo
Polar Air Cargo is raising the bar for gender diversity in the industry as it strives to grow its network.
At a time when women in the air cargo industry continue to be underrepresented at senior level it’s refreshing to see a majority women-led airline going from strength to strength.
Four out of seven of Polar Air Cargo’s immediate senior management team are women, an impressive feat considering the International Air Transport Association (IATA) is striving for 25% women among senior leaders in aviation by 2025 through its 25by2025 initiative.
Polar’s senior vice president & chief management officer Kersti Krepp says: “I’m so passionate about women in leadership. I think that women in this industry are a real positive.”
The leadership team at the White Plains, New York-headquartered cargo airline, 51% owned by Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings and 49% owned by DHL Express, has been transformed since a troubled period in its history that saw former staff charged with fraud.
Aside from Krepp, women leading the company include Sylvie Blondeel, senior vice president and chief financial officer; Ingrid Chariah, senior director, network planning, and Patricia Goodwin-Peters, senior vice president, human resources.
Having a number of women in Polar’s leadership team serves as an inspirational, and aspirational benchmark for women employed in junior positions within the company.
“If I look across all of our operating departments, I can see good gender diversity, both in the senior management team as well as in the junior ranks that feed our future leadership,” stresses Krepp.
“I’m 22 years at the company and I really try to encourage not only women, but people from all backgrounds to continue to develop their skills, to be (Polar’s) next generation.”
This is helped by an overall leadership that is robust. She adds: “I can’t say enough positive things about our people.”
Recruitment and retention is an ongoing area of investment for Polar and offering a range of inclusive learning opportunities to accommodate all staff is important for the airline.
“One of our focus areas is investing in learning and development for employees.
“When I show up at work every day, if I’m not learning something new, I’m bored. It is also about allowing people to stretch assignments so that they can learn more about other departments.”
She adds that skilling up staff involves investing in common understanding of business and driving customer centricity to achieve “less of a siloed approach and more of a whole enterprise approach when it comes to delivering for our shareholders, our customers and ultimately for our team members”.
Company culture is also one of the selling points for new recruits and, with around 1000 employees, being a close-knit team is important.
“We’re constantly building on our culture and sense of community within the Polar team. We’re a pretty small organisation when it comes down to it.”
Being on the smaller end of the airline size scale means decisions can be discussed and implemented with ease. On this topic, Krepp says the airline’s senior leadership team have recently got together to work on strategy and operational improvements to refine customer service.
Kersti Krepp Polar Air Cargo chief management officer. Photo: Polar Air Cargo
Network growth
Despite being a smaller airline, Polar is seeking to grow its network to offer customers more geographical reach.
As well as flights to and from its US Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky (CVG) and Los Angeles (LAX) hubs, airports served by Polar in Asia include Shanghai Pudong (PVG), Sunan Shuofang (WUX), Shenzhen Bao’an (SZX) and Guangzhou Baiyun (CAN) in China; Chubu Centrair (NGO) and Narita (NRT) in Japan; Incheon (ICN) in South Korea; Singapore Changi (SIN); and Taiwan Taoyuan (TPE).
Hong Kong (HKG) is also part of Polar’s intra-Asia network, while APAC interline connections extend the network further in Asia. In Europe, Polar also calls at Leipzig/Halle (LEJ) in Germany.
The airline also serves a wide range of verticals, include automotive, machinery parts, perishables and dangerous goods.
In terms of network and vertical operations combined, Krepp reflects: “We have a lot of intra-Asia activity.” She adds: “Perishables on the westbound are still very strong.”
The airline is also dedicating more of its freighter capacity to transpacific e-commerce shipments, as well as intra-Asia and Asia-Europe e-commerce shipments.
“Quite a bit of capacity has moved in to solve that demand,” Krepp says.
But with an operational fleet of four Boeing 747-8Fs and four Boeing 777Fs, Polar doesn’t currently have any plans to add freighters.
Polar works closely with Atlas and DHL on fleet, plus network and strategy, as part of the ownership dynamic.
Atlas Air Worldwide chief executive Michael Steen heads up Polar’s leadership team to steer alignment of the airline’s operations with those of sister airline Atlas Air.
“We are in constant contact with Atlas and Michael Steen,” Krepp notes.
Although there are no plans to add to the fleet, interline partnerships serve to bulk up its business.
“We sell a huge amount of interline traffic for both DHL Express and Atlas Air,” stresses Krepp. “What we sell is much larger than our fleet. This is one of the areas of growth.”
The airline has recently signed new interline agreements and is “always open to more” to grow its network, says Krepp. “We’re constantly trying to add origin-destination pairs for our customers.”
Polar’s work with GSAs has also helped extend its network. “Over the last five years Polar has invested in expanding our general sales agent (GSA) network in India, across South Asia and Southeast Asia. Even though we don’t necessarily fly there, we see a very significant demand pattern.”
Krepp says India is an example of where this has worked well.
“India as a market has been extraordinarily strong and has a shortage of capacity. So, we’re offering some capacity to our India GSA, Super Quick Freight. They move it on another carrier into North Asia to connect with our fleet out of North Asia to the US.”
Commenting on US growth, she adds: “We fly mainly from Cincinnati and LA. But we’ve also got quite a significant number of flights that we buy capacity on to feed into Cincinnati, and also Los Angeles.
“And we have a really robust (US) road feeder service network, including both scheduled trucks from gateways feeding into our air gateways, as well as on-demand trucks.”
Photo: Polar Air Cargo
Digital investments
Polar aims to match its investments in operations with investments in digitalisation. A major project for the company is advancing its cargo management system.
It is boosting its existing CHAMP Cargospot Airline technology application, which provides carriers with complete end-to-end control over the sale, operation and management of cargo, with Cargospot APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to improve the booking, scheduling and tracking process for shipments.
“We aim to drive better visibility into all areas of services that we provide to our customers and the newest feature is API technologies,” says Krepp. “So, it will help drive our integrated cloud strategy and provide a much better experience to all of our stakeholders.”
She adds: “We’re estimating to go live by the end of this year. I think we’ll start reaping the benefits in 2025.”
Investments aside, there are many global challenges for air cargo that are keeping Polar busy and situations can change quickly. Consequently, it’s best to not have a fixed mindset on how a process ought to be, suggests Krepp.
“It’s about looking for and keeping up with indicators in the market, then being ready to try to work with your customers to provide solutions for unexpected events. Because they are very frequent.”
She says it’s important to adopt an attitude of “this is how it’s going to work today, but maybe we have to change tomorrow”.
Reflecting on the business outlook for the rest of this year, Krepp says: “We still see growth in the industry and we are still experiencing pretty high loads. We’ve got a really interesting network. So, I’m relatively positive about 2024.”
