Network Airline Services’ (NAS) View of the Cargo GSA Market Over the Next 5 Years

Cargo GSA companies have traditionally provided airlines with strong local market knowledge and strong personal relationships with the freight forwarders, who provided the cargo and supervision of the cargo handlers who prepared the cargo. Furthermore, protecting the airline from credit risk in global territories far beyond their headquarters.

However, the development of digital online cargo revenue management and booking systems have transformed this landscape allowing direct communication between the airline, the global forwarding community and handling agents. Whereas some GSA companies view this transformation as a threat to their business model, NAS embraces the change digitalisation has brought and has embraced it as part of its 5-year plan.

NAS’ core goal is to provide the airlines we represent with the best quality human and IT resources in the territories we represent them. Our 5-year future is based on this transformed landscape.

Changes we have made considering this are:

1. Global and regional digital marketing teams to ensure all our carriers’ products and prices are communicated in a clear and effective way, in line with our client carrier’s brand guidelines.
2. Market Research – NAS subscribes to several platforms that provide live data on the key market data such as revenue, tonnage and yield.
3. NAS, in addition to using reservation systems of our client carriers, provides airlines who do not subscribe to a system with our own, inhouse digital system.

The digital transformation has benefited the forwarding community, gaining access to pricing and reservations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, the sheer volume of information that forwarding agents receive via e-mail and social media means a direct relationship with the airline is essential to understand which of the airline’s prices and products are best suited for their shippers to use. In this regard, NAS is committed to maintaining regular and consistent face to face meetings with all our forwarding customers, backed up by a strong and experienced customer services team to provide support to the forwarding community in the territories we operate in.

In conclusion, NAS sees the digital revolution over the future 5 years transforming the air cargo industry allowing airlines, forwarders and handling agents the ability to communicate directly with each other. A well-managed and resourced GSA is needed even more so, to identify, secure and retain the best volumes of cargo for the airlines.

For more information on Network Airline Services and the wider Network Aviation Group of companies, visit our website at: www.network-airline.com