Dear Member,

So UK plc is back open, more or less. Suddenly we’ve all become volcanologists, rediscovered that Dunkirk spirit and realised that a) we live on an island in the middle of the North Sea and b) the world is really, really big.

Though our boys, and girls, are finally coming home the repercussions of an Icelandic volcano with an unpronounceable name blowing its top are going to be with us for a long time. It will be next week before every stranded traveller returns to this Sceptred Isle, such is the backlog.

And you don’t want to think about the repercussions for the supply chain. Here’s a small factoid that may be of interest: Air freight accounts for only 0.5 per cent of the UK's international goods movements by weight, but 25 per cent by value; including pharmaceuticals, luxury goods and fresh produce.

Some urgent freight has pinched slots in other modes of transport and the knock on effect will be with us for some time to come. Last week there were some dire predictions of price rises as a result, we’ll just have to see how things settle down.

The vast majority of air freight comes to us in the belly of passenger planes so freight is in exactly the same boat as passenger traffic. Or rather aircraft not boat - that’s the whole problem!

A couple of interesting things have come to light. Firstly how red-hot our land and sea based passenger operators have been to respond, Eurostar and long distance UK operators such as East Coast have laid on more trains, while ferries have carried large numbers of extra foot passengers, etc.

Secondly, I’m not sure how much transport experts were listened to by Those In Power during the event. At our Shipping Lecture last Thursday there were a large number of transport experts from not just shipping, but aviation and a variety of other modes, and none of them thought planes would be flying until Monday at the earliest if European Governments maintained the same cautious approach. One chap had been a pilot and related a story about his engines cutting out due to volcanic ash over Africa in the 1980s and it was straight out of Biggles..............more

David Jinks  Editor
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