Opportunities For Development of Advanced Large Cargo Aircraft

Opportunities For Development of Advanced Large Cargo Aircraft

Alien H. Whitehead, "Opportunities For Development of Advanced Large Cargo Aircraft" (April 1, 1976). The Space Congress® Proceedings. Paper 2.

Link :

The choice of my article : 

I choose this article because I think it's important to know, to review and study the beginning of the history of air cargo. This article was written in 1976, so at the beginning of the developpement of the air cargo, the context is important, at this period we made the choice to exploit and develop the air for the transportation of products. After seeing the pros and cons, we knew that there was an opportunity to reduce the cost of transportation by developing good planes and improving some others points like the air cargo terminal area system.

Findings/Results :

At this period (1976), We find that the air cargo had 3 mains advantages : -rapid delivery  (useful for some products like perishables (lettuce, livestock,…) - ability to bridge geographical barriers (like mountain, sea,…) - flexible market response (to follow the customer demand).
The principal disadvantages of air cargo is the higher freight rates. However, when other distribution elements are considered such as warehouse, inventory, and spoilage costs, the reduction in those factors associated with the air mode can often provide a net savings by air.  

It’s why the air cargo is really exploited today and this is the reason why companies choose the air transportation. (Today lot of improvement was made in this domain)

Indeed, after lot of researches and studies by NASA and industry indicate that large gains in aircraft payload and fuel efficiency are possible from the application of advanced technologies and configuration concepts.
They worked principally on two points: -The shape and design of a big airplane years after years. -The improvement of the efficiency of the area to load the plane and pick up the products.

Managerial Implications :

All this to know that today with all the improvement in this domain, the choice of the air to transport products is sometimes really better than others ways of transports. The advantages are the same and the disadvantage of the cost is minimize thanks to the airplanes of our days and the optimization of the area of delivery and loading of products in the plane.

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