Montenegro Freight Forwarding Services
Air, Sea & Road Freight Between Montenegro and the UK

Putzger perspective: Not enough done to protect aviation

After a few years in the business, almost everybody in the aviation industry can remember at least one large-scale disruption to the system. For recent industry entrants in North America, one likely candidate is the massive telecommunications and radar outage on 21 September that snarled air traffic in the US Northeast for more than eight hours, causing the cancellation or delays of over 7,000 flights, including 1,400 flights at the major New York City airports, where 130 world leaders and dozens of ministers were arriving for the annual high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. The following day, the US Transportation Secretary assured the public that such an outage would not occur again after the replacement of the existing air traffic control system, which has been prone to hiccups. Not everybody thinks that a new ATC system will be the kind of magic wand that heralds the end of large-scale disruptions. The US Airforwarders Association has pointed to a report by the US Government Accountability Office that was published on the very day when the disruption in the Northeast occurred. The report identified significant gaps in the protection of aviation communication systems, and it noted that the FAA had not completed the basic risk assessments or built the monitoring needs to address them. "That is not good enough when the threats facing aviation are becoming more sophisticated, and the consequences of failure can spread across airports, airlines, freight networks, and the wider economy," commented AfA executive director Brandon Fried. Such incidents and their causes and catalysts for broader repercussions are not infrequent reminders to the air cargo industry of the vulnerability of the aviation system it is built on. The US is no outlier when it comes to air traffic control. ATC capacity and staffing shortages have been a headache for European operators. These strained systems are faced with a relentless growth in traffic. Airbus forecasts 3.9% annual growth in passenger traffic over the coming 20 years. Moreover, ATC is not the only Achilles heel for air cargo relying on limited foundations. In September, IATA warned that screening alone is not enough to cope with the threat of hazardous goods and called for stronger, collaborative action to muster a multi-layered approach. As with flight disruptions, the risks are outpacing the safety mechanisms, which calls for broad, collaborative measures - at a time when the spirit of international co-operation appears to be on the wane.

Lady Luck and the lifer: Dan Wall's Expeditors is on a tear

Stock value at record $206.23 intraday post-interims. Quarterly revenue up 42%, operating profit up 55%. A freight market delivering disruption, scarcity, and an AI infrastructure boom. Expeditors' new chief executive has produced extraordinary results - however, the real test may be what happens when the market stops helping. There's no polite way to say this, so let's just say it: Dan Wall (pictured below) picked a hell of a time to become chief executive of Expeditors International.

Poor new year liner schedule reliability only improves as summer arrives

Global schedule reliability has become more seasonal, while weekly liner service deployments have grown increasingly volatile since the pandemic, according to new analysis by Sea-Intelligence. Drawing on its Global Liner Performance database, which tracks monthly vessel arrivals from July 2011 to September 2026, the consultant found a stronger relationship between declining punctuality and the severity of delays, at , alongside more pronounced seasonal fluctuations in reliability. While declining reliability has historically been associated with longer delays, the correlation between the two measures has shifted to a lower sustained level since the pandemic, indicating a tighter relationship between whether vessels arrive late and the magnitude of their delays than was evident before. Sea-Intelligence also identified a marked change in the seasonal pattern of global schedule reliability. Before the pandemic, between 2013 and 2019, reliability typically fell in the early months of the year, improved through spring and early summer, dipped slightly in late summer, before reaching another peak in October and November. However, the alignment of individual years with this established seasonal pattern has deteriorated since 2020. Comparing average monthly reliability across the two periods, Sea-Intelligence found that seasonal fluctuations have become more pronounced, with lower reliability at the start of the year and higher performance peaks during the summer. The consultant said the overall pattern had become more extreme compared with pre-pandemic conditions. Separate Sea-Intelligence analysis found that the number of weekly services operated on the main Asia-Europe and transpacific trades had become considerably more volatile. Using its Trade Capacity Outlook database, Sea-Intelligence measured weekly service numbers on four major routes: Asia-North America West Coast; Asia-North America East Coast; Asia-North Europe; and Asia-Mediterranean. The analysis accounted for fluctuations caused by new service launches and cancellations, blank sailings, schedule slippage, and seasonal or niche services. To measure changes in operational consistency, the consultant calculated the annual standard deviation in weekly service numbers as a percentage of the average number of services operated. The results showed a clear upward shift from 2020 across all four trades, indicating greater uncertainty about how many services would actually operate from one week to the next. The increase was particularly pronounced on the Asia-Europe routes, where variability rose more sharply than on the transpacific. Comparing average variability in 2013-2019 with 2020-2026, Sea-Intelligence found that Asia-North America East Coast experienced the smallest increase, at 26%, while Asia-North Europe recorded the largest, at 78%. The findings have implications beyond the planning challenges faced by cargo owners and logistics providers, as greater week-to-week fluctuations in service numbers also make it harder for container terminals to plan resources and manage workloads, as the number of vessels and volume of cargo requiring handling can change significantly. Sea-Intelligence warned that this increased the risk of sudden congestion, which could, in turn, undermine schedule reliability further.