CargoLogicAir to boost UK flights as no-deal Brexit looms

UK registered freighter airline CargoLogicAir (CLA) is escalating its flight schedule from March 15 as the Stansted-based carrier prepares for a no-deal Brexit when the UK leaves the European Union.

CLA chief executive David Kerr confirmed that the B747F operator would increase its current twice weekly flight schedule ex-Stansted to 12 flights per week out of the UK, adding Doncaster and Prestwick airports to its UK hub network.

Said Kerr: “We have been in Brexit contingency-planning mode for some time, but we are now at the point of executing a new schedule and network that will endure.”

Kerr said that the carrier’s revised network early has two key components: “Firstly, we will continue to exploit our fifth freedom traffic rights as a UK operator, while obviously some of that is subject to final verification after Brexit.”

“Secondly, we get a chance to bed-in the network operationally, but also it gives our customers a chance to see that there is a post-Brexit network available with significantly more operations into and out of the UK.”

Kerr said that the new network configuration will come at an additional cost: “We will have to fly further, landing and taking off a bit more often, but we believe there is an upside to come, either in the short term with disruption post-Brexit or as we approach it.

“In the medium to long term I think there will be some changing trade lane flows. The UK is currently an underserved airfreight market because it can rely upon logistics flows to and from the mainland of Europe, and I think that the offering could change in terms of timing, the speed to market.”

One new CLA routing is a flight beginning in Houston, flying into Prestwick and then onwards to Frankfurt, and from Germany to the Middle East and/or Asia.

A full interview with David Kerr will appear online