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Qatar Cargo to expand Hong Kong operations

Qatar Airways Cargo will increase its flights from Hong Kong International following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK). Qatar Airways currently offers cargo capacity of 56 flights per week from Hong Kong across its bellyhold and freighter flights but it expects to increase this number following the signing of the MoU. "Building on this momentum, Qatar Airways Cargo intends to expand its business presence in Hong Kong by increasing flight frequency and developing new routes via Hong Kong, further reinforcing HKIA's position as the world's leading air cargo hub," AAHK said in a press release. The airline has also relocated its regional headquarters to Hong Kong. As well as the new regional headquarters and expansion of operations, the MoU will also see the two parties explore collaboration in areas including operational excellence and service enhancement, sustainable development, and talent development through courses offered by the Hong Kong International Aviation Academy. AAHK chief executive Vivian Cheung said: "The air cargo market in the region is highly competitive. We welcome the intention of Qatar Airways Cargo to expand its business presence in Hong Kong by increasing flight frequency and developing new routes via Hong Kong. "We will continue to attract and work with different airlines with a view to further strengthening our connectivity and competitiveness." Earlier this year, the Doha-hubbed carrier announced it had increased the number of weekly passenger flights to 14 from 10. This is in addition to 42 existing weekly freighter flights. In total, the carrier offers 4,474 tonnes of cargo capacity to and from Hong Kong per week.

Rise in US domestic intermodal traffic a return to 'historic norm'

Tight capacity and soaring rates in the truckload sector have prompted US shippers to turn increasingly to intermodal transport. But although enthusiasm for the alternative appears to be waning, it remains more fluid than trucking, despite predictions of rising volumes in September and October. The honeymoon seems to be drawing to a close amid shipper complaints of slower train speeds and less-reliable pick-up and delivery schedules. The pricing advantage has also been dented, Union Pacific's announcement mid-month of a peak season surcharge for freight from California and higher spot rates for shippers that tender less than ten loads a week, just one example. Still, intermodal traffic continues to grow. Numbers published by the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) show that through the first half of the year, it grew 2.5% year on year, propelled by a 7.4% increase in domestic containers, whereas international containers sank 1.9%. But the slump in international volumes reversed last month, driven by a 4.5% increase in containerised imports. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach both reported strong import growth for July. The latest numbers from the Association of American Railroads show a 3.5% rise in US intermodal volume for the week ending 23 July, while overall rail traffic grew 2.5% The rise in traffic, combined with the expectation of peak season volumes building, has raised concerns of congestion at ports and railheads, but so far this has not affected flows significantly. "We are not currently seeing widespread port or rail congestion, but we are monitoring several localised pressure points heading into September," reported Joel Henry, CEO of drayage and landside logistics provider IMC Logistics, which has stations at all major US intermodal points. "Newark Terminals continues to have congestion issues, which are causing gate moves to average from one to 2.5 hours. New Orleans and Mobile continue to experience terminal throughput and appointment availability challenges. Oakland is struggling with gate moves up to 2.5 hours, even though volumes are flat," he explained. "Despite steady throughput in Los Angeles and Long Beach, we are seeing delays in obtaining appointments at most terminals and a tightening chassis supply. We have also seen gate times increase via the North/South & West Coast Railroad Chicago rail ramps," he added. Dutch Fry, VP intermodal business development at Echo Global Logistics, said the network remained fluid and had capacity to absorb more traffic, thanks to investments by the rail carriers. He regards the rise in domestic intermodal traffic as a return to an historic norm, noting that shippers lost faith in the product during the pandemic, which saw the rail carriers struggle. The shrinkage of trucking capacity that sent trucking rates and tender rejection soaring and blew out shipping managers' budgets had been the trigger for a re-appraisal of intermodal, he said. His conversations with rail carriers indicated that their networks had absorbed recent growth without problems. Issues arose chiefly at the interfaces with trucking, at railheads, they told him. This aligns with recent comments by Maersk CEO Vincent Clerk during the earnings call on the company's second-quarter results. He described congestion as a "deeply entrenched" in supply chains in the wake of a structural shift in market dynamics. The problem is not confined to US maritime gateways, he added: "From ports to inland transportation, we are seeing increased congestion and disruption across multiple geographies." In terms of choosing between intermodal and truck options, the former offers more reliable, stable pricing than the trucking spot market, Mr Fry noted. Moreover, the trucking market is widely expected to see further reduction in capacity as the US government continues its campaign to eliminate non-domiciled drivers and those with insufficient English language proficiency from the industry, which augurs heightened tender rejection rates and continuing upward pressure on pricing. To some extent, the latter aspect will echo in intermodal rates. Mr Dutch noted that pricing was based less on the rail volume than on trucking rates. Meanwhile, IANA predicts intermodal demand will build momentum in September with the traditional peak season. But Mr Henry expressed concern about the cumulative effect of recent constraints if activity remained elevated. He added that Panama Canal draught restrictions could also affect vessel capacity and cargo routing, which could prompt some shifts of Asia-origin cargo from east to west coast ports, while some Europe-origin cargo destined for the west coast could be routed through east coast gateways. "At this point, we do not believe shippers should expect a widespread congestion event, but it's key they remain flexible and build additional time into their supply chains in markets where carriers are contending with limited terminal appointments, increased gate throughput, and/or stressed chassis supply," he advised. Noting that the past four weeks had seen a strong rise in intermodal volumes, Mr Fry said a continuation of this trend over the next four weeks would add up to a considerable increase in traffic that would require monitoring. But he does not expect to see a lasting impact, as the strong increase is unlikely to last beyond mid-October.

Stop Trusting One Number: Why the Smartest Ocean Freight Teams Now Watch a Gap, Not an ETA

For as long as ocean freight has existed, teams have asked the same question: which number do I trust? It's the wrong question. Every shipment carries at least two arrival estimates. The carrier's ETA, the official schedule teams plan around. And, increasingly, a predictive signal like SeaVantage's Predicted Time of Arrival, PTA, built from a vessel's live position, speed, historical routing pattern and congestion data. For years, the instinct has been to treat these as rivals, to pick a side and act on it. The smartest ocean freight teams have stopped doing that. They've stopped asking which number is right, and started watching the distance between them. That distance is the real signal. Not ETA. Not PTA. The gap. WHY THE OLD QUESTION DOESN'T WORK Carrier ETAs are official for a reason. They're the trusted baseline that operations teams, customers, and partners plan around, and carrier reliability keeps improving industry-wide as lines compete on service quality. But an ETA is a point-in-time estimate, set at a moment and revised on a schedule, not continuously. A predictive signal like PTA is the opposite: built from live AIS position, vessel speed, port congestion, and historical lane behavior, updating near real time. These aren't competing measurements of the same thing. They're two different kinds of information. Asking which one is "right" is like asking whether a weather forecast or a live radar feed is more accurate. They answer different questions. The forecast tells you the plan. The radar tells you what's actually happening right now. What matters is whether they still agree. WHAT THE GAP ACTUALLY TELLS A TEAM When ETA and PTA are close together, that alignment is itself useful information: the official schedule and the real-time signal agree, and the current plan holds. Trucking, warehouse slots, and customer notifications can proceed as scheduled. When they start to diverge, that's the moment to act, before the carrier's official update catches up. A PTA trending later than the ETA is an early warning of a possible delay, days ahead of the moment a carrier revises its own schedule. An ETA that keeps getting pushed back is a sign that operating uncertainty is increasing, and it may be time to shift to more conservative planning. A PTA that swings significantly, especially on longer legs or during mid-voyage disruption, is a volatile signal, one to treat as an early flag rather than a confirmed time. None of this requires picking a winner between the two numbers. It requires watching the space between them, and reacting to how that space changes. WHERE THIS MATTERS MOST: THE LEGS CARRIERS UPDATE LEAST OFTEN A single voyage isn't one estimate for one journey. It's several legs: departure from the port of loading, one or more transshipment calls, and the final approach to the discharge port. SeaVantage's Cargo Insight platform tracks ETA and PTA independently at every one of these legs, because the gap doesn't behave the same way at each stage. (See a real leg-by-leg example: How to Read SeaVantage's PTA & Carrier ETA.) Transshipment calls are where this matters most. They're also where official schedule updates tend to lag furthest behind reality, because a delay at a transshipment port often doesn't show up in a carrier's system until it has already happened. A gap that opens at a transshipment leg, days before the connecting vessel departs, is the earliest possible warning a team will get that a booked connection is at risk. This is the practical value of watching the gap rather than a single number: it turns a schedule that updates periodically into a signal that updates continuously, without asking anyone to distrust the schedule itself. PROOF IN THE FIELD, NOT JUST IN THEORY This is not a theoretical exercise. SeaVantage's Cargo Insight platform is built specifically to track PTA and ETA side by side, and the results speak through the people using it daily. Hyundai Glovis, a long-standing SeaVantage customer, described the shift plainly: "Working with SeaVantage allowed us to access multiple carrier data on one platform, as well as predicted visibility, meaning we are able to inform our customers in advance of unforeseen delays and disruptions of their shipment." That's the gap doing its job: surfacing a disruption before it becomes a customer complaint. Independent reviewers describe the same pattern. On Gartner Peer Insights, where SeaVantage's Ocean Visibility Platform holds a 5.0 overall rating, one reviewer, a manager at a global transportation firm with more than $30 billion in revenue, singled out the platform's value for "making decisions in some special issues such as alternating routes or sheltering," decisions that depend on catching a diverging signal early, not after the fact. Another reviewer, an operations manager, called it "the most accurate and supportable tool for ocean business," pointing to real-time vessel and port data as central to daily risk planning, precisely the kind of planning that a widening gap is meant to trigger. A NEW HABIT FOR OCEAN FREIGHT TEAMS None of this asks a team to abandon the carrier's ETA. It remains the official word, the number every contract and customer conversation is built around. What changes is what a team does with the time between now and that ETA. Instead of waiting for an official update to confirm what's already happening on the water, teams that watch the gap get the chance to act on it first, whether that means holding a truck booking, adjusting a warehouse slot, or getting ahead of a customer notification. The question was never which number to trust. It was always how early a team could see trouble coming. The gap answers that question, leg by leg, for every shipment on the water. SeaVantage's Cargo Insight platform tracks ETA and PTA side by side, at every leg of every voyage, on a self-serve dashboard or through a full API integration. Ocean freight teams can start a free trial or book a demo to see the gap on their own shipments.