Sometimes time is critical. Sometimes it’s just more about convenience. Or it might simply be that shipping is complicated or not direct to the required destination. Airfreight is an option often used when it comes to motorsport or with high value vehicles, to minimise the amount of time the shipment is in transit.
As with all transport, a shorter transit time also means lower risk. Rather than potentially weeks at sea, and being at the full mercy of the weather, its journey time is a matter of hours securely contained within the hold of the aircraft.
While passengers are checking in, duty free shopping and preparing to settle in for the long haul, the ground staff will have prepared the lower decks of the aircraft to accommodate a handful of vehicles among the cargo. Having been transported, screened and secured onto platforms, cars – along with all luggage – are then carefully loaded and secured for the journey ahead.
Another expedited process is processing at the destination. On arrival, the vehicle would be unloaded from the plane and processed within hours. Being one of a very small number of vehicles carried on a flight, the process is much more efficient, compared to when transported by sea, where sometimes several hundred containers need to be processed after arriving at the port.
It is a premium service, but justified by the mitigation of risk and the much shorter timescales involved from collection to delivery.
