2020 has without a doubt brought about the single biggest disruptor to the global aviation sector potentially ever seen: the COVID-19 pandemic. On 31 December, 2019, Chinese authorities officially revealed they were treating a small number of citizens suffering from a mysterious illness in Wuhan. No one knew just what this would mean for the
Cathay Pacific is expanding its cold storage facilities at its cargo terminal to allow it to temporarily house more than 8.6 million vaccine doses per day, as the global vaccine distribution challenge begins to ramp up. The terminal’s current capacity is around 7.1 million doses, and a new cold storage room will be added to
The first shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been flown into Singapore from Belgium onboard a Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400 freighter. The shipment from Brussels was brought to Singapore onboard flight SQ7979 on Monday evening, and is believed to be the first COVID vaccine shipment to arrive in Asia. Logistics services firm DHL said
Airports around the world have been warned to stay on high alert and increase security efforts to protect COVID-19 vaccine shipments, as reports suggest vaccines are being targeted by criminal enterprises. Within days of the first COVID-19 vaccines being approved and delivered in the UK and US, reports surfaced of criminal networks attempting to sell
Carriers around the US have already begun efforts to transport the recently approved Pfizer vaccine around the country. The US Food and Drug Administration provided the necessary regulatory approval for use of the vaccine on Friday, providing the ultimate test for the aviation industry, which has spent months preparing to distribute the temperature-sensitive vaccines. Following
Airlines and aircraft lessors appear to be turning their sights to converting old passenger jets into freighters, as they bank on a post-COVID boom in e-commerce, and benefit from the falling price of used planes. According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, the number of passenger-to-freighter (P2F) conversions around the world will increase by 36 per
