Read our series of Marketplace Spotlight interviews with the people who are making the Yocova platform come alive. Don’t miss this engaging interview with Cristian Sutter, Chief Executive Officer of Avensis Aviation about the reversible conversion solutions Avensis provides, his insights on the cargo and freight industry today and how and why Avensis was born, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cristian Sutter is the Chief Executive Officer of Avensis Aviation. The company was formed just over two years ago to address major capacity issues in aviation, brought about by a void due to the pandemic, a grounded global fleet of passenger aircraft and an urgent need to transport goods, including personal protective equipment (PPE), around the world. Here, Cristian talks to our resident aviation journalist John Walton about the challenges that led Avensis to innovate in this way, seasonal trends in aviation cargo, the technical solutions Avensis now provides and what he sees is needed next in the industry.
What does being the CEO of Avensis involve?
“First of all, I take care of the strategy of Avensis Aviation and look after the product portfolio we’re currently offering or developing to meet market needs. As CEO I also manage the team, and the development and growth of the business which, over the past couple of years has been stratospheric. The rate at which the business has grown has been rapid and that’s obviously great, but of course keeping pace with that growth curve does present challenges.”
What does Avensis Aviation do?
“Avensis is a passenger to freighter conversion engineering and design company. We started up nearly two and a half years ago, so during the COVID-19 pandemic, when we detected a need in the market for a specific type of aircraft conversion, which was not then available. What Avensis did was to address some issues of asset flexibility and asset management, which was proving to be a real headache for airline operators back then. So we rapidly developed a portfolio of passenger to freighter aircraft conversion solutions to address the needs of the operators.”
Where are we now in the world of cargo in 2023?
“I think 2023 is going to be an interesting year for the cargo market. The pandemic came to an end for most of the world some time ago, though some countries such as China still pursued a zero-COVID policy, however they changed their approach at the end of 2022. But even since much of the world moved beyond the pandemic, quite a few significant events around the world have collided and I think some interesting developments are occurring as a result of that. Obviously there has been an interest rate hike and inflation, fuel price rises as a result of the war in Ukraine, plus the impact of China’s approach to COVID. So, all together there has been a lot of turbulence on a global scale at the end of last year and into this one. But we’re now seeing signs of recovery and some of these issues easing. China has opened up and that generates a lot of cargo traffic, and fuel prices have also come down to more historical levels. I think, and many analysts seem to have the same opinion, that things will start to pick up in the second quarter of 2023 and we can then gear up to the Q4 holiday season, which will be good news for the industry as a whole.”
You mentioned holiday season. How do seasons affect the cargo industry?
“Well, it of course depends on the type of cargo you’re dealing with. Every industry has several types of markets and within freighting, there are several. Express cargo is one of the markets that is sensitive to seasons as it gets very busy in the run-up to big festivals, for example, Christmas or Chinese New Year. To use Christmas as an example, people generally buy a lot of presents for friends and family etc, and increasingly this is now done via the ecommerce channel, so that obviously then creates more traffic. Increasingly this is also tied into the consumer electronics market. Let’s say someone wants a new phone or tablet, then these will often become Christmas presents. And if you look at Samsung’s or Apple’s release calendar, for example, you can see that they are typically tied into the run-up to holiday seasons.”
With this seasonal fluctuation within the express sector of cargo, how is capacity and contracting managed?
“It really depends. If you’re a commercial airline already operating belly freight then you’ll already have seasonal contracts to move cargo, but that might not necessarily be express. Then there are some airlines that only transport belly freight, others that have a dedicated cargo team and others that operate both a passenger and cargo fleet and so have greater flexibility. I wouldn’t say that one type of operation has a single type of contract, since there are many variables. If you have a fleet that needs to operate in high season, then it will need to have a diversified cargo contract throughout the year, otherwise what’s it going to do? There are so many different types of freight, which could be anything from fashion, consumer goods, electronics and perishables. And actually, perishables is quite an interesting one as a lot of it is transported by belly freight by airlines travelling on routes to exotic locations. It’s actually fascinating when you start to drill down into the everyday things we consume and perhaps take for granted how they are transported.”
You mentioned the COVID-19 pandemic was a pivotal point for the cargo industry.
“I think what happened there was unprecedented. We of course have had major disruptions to the industry before, such as volcanic ash clouds and 9/11, but I don’t think there has been a time where a worldwide fleet of aircraft was grounded. As I mentioned, a wide variety of different cargo is transported by a belly freight service provided by commercial airlines, but this largely ground to a halt back then due to airlines grounding their passenger fleet. That had a huge impact, but there was the added issue that much of the Western world’s manufacturing operations tend to be carried out in Asia, since it is more cost-efficient, and all of a sudden, the PPE that was manufactured in that region of the world needed to be shipped as a matter of urgency. It wasn’t a case of being able to wait, let’s say, three months for that equipment – countries needed it immediately, yet the means of transportation were no longer operating. So, basically an emergency solution needed to be found.”
Can you explain a bit more about the emergency COVID freighters?
“Well, I think in general, crisis helps to push forward innovation and that was true of this situation within aviation. Here’s a bit of background. Before the COVID-19 crisis, freighter aircraft were quite traditional in a sense. You had a main cargo door, a loading system, palettes and containers and then the rest would go into the belly of the aircraft. There were some passenger and cargo combination aircraft, but many of these had been retired by then. So, there was an urgent need to transport a whole lot of goods, including vital PPE, with a global fleet of aircraft grounded and the existing capacity of freighter aircraft was simply not enough.
“We recognised this need, so at Avensis we came up with the idea of temporarily operating passenger aircraft for freight, or temporarily converting passenger aircraft into freighters. Some airlines had started to load cargo onto seats in the cabin to be able to fulfil orders. I have had a long career in aircraft cabins so that wasn’t the best solution in my opinion, since it could create significant damage to the cabin. If you had asked me back in 2015, say, whether I thought that scenario could ever happen, I would have said absolutely not! But here we all were in that situation and so aircraft still flying as passenger aircraft were transporting cargo and still required to have cabin inspections to be carried out by cabin crew, but with firefighting equipment.
“A full freighter aircraft has what is called Class E, which is a smoke event and ventilation system in place to automatically manage fires or hazards without personnel needing to be involved. Having cabin personnel inspect the aircraft was not ideal and had been permitted by regulatory agencies such as the IASA and FIA, but only as a temporary measure. It was a patch solution and a more formal solution needed to be developed. We thought at that time that passenger operations might return to some kind of normality in 2024 or 2025 and fortunately we’ve seen recovery start to happen much faster. Nevertheless, we identified a need to be able to provide Class E capability to passenger aircraft temporarily, but in a way that meant it could be converted back when required.
“So, what we did was to design a Class E compartment that was fully reversible, and would enable cargo to be safely transported without fundamental changes to the aircraft, such as installing a cargo door. And that enabled airlines to switch between passenger and freight configurations. Then, particularly once the exemption from the regulators came about, it became very apparent that our product was filling a void in the market.”
And so, the passenger-freighters or preighters were born?
“Yes, the preighters were born as a clear example of the aviation industry all coming together to find a solution to a worldwide problem, and even though it was quite short-lived it’s amazing that it happened.”
Let’s talk about the installation of a Class E system in a passenger cabin. What is the difference between that and a passenger cabin?
“The main difference is that on a preighters aircraft, you’ve transformed the aircraft to carry cargo, but you’ve kept all of the monuments intact such as washrooms, lavatories and galleys. When it comes to the conversions, we’ll remove most of the cabin seats apart from a few rows for cargo personnel just after door 1, and will then install a small barrier to separate the crew and cargo. We’ll also install a new smoke detection system and modify the environmental control system of the aircraft depending on what kind of cargo it will be carrying. So, the big difference with a conversion like this is that it can be converted back to a passenger aircraft without any major structural challenges to the aircraft.
“One of the reasons we came up with a solution like this is due to the Avensis team’s experience in the industry. We know a lot of aircraft assets are leased and not actually owned by the airline, which means you face a pretty stringent end-of-lease contract when you return that aircraft or that asset and you need to return it back to the original delivery configuration.
“In terms of weight, obviously we’ve removed the passenger cabin and what we install is not as heavy as a passenger cabin so we win payload in the aircraft, and that’s the main reason we do a freighter aircraft, which is to optimise payload. And obviously there’s then the flexibility to play around with weight depending upon our customers’ needs.”
Is this something airlines will be doing on a seasonal basis?
“Well, it depends on the airline’s capacity, market needs, but also the capability and availability of MROs. It generally takes around five to six weeks to convert a passenger aircraft into a freighter and about half of that to return it to a passenger configuration. Some airlines have more business-sensitive routes and others are more dependent on leisure, so it really depends on the airline and its routing as to how they may reconfigure the aircraft around the seasons. But the flexibility of having two configurations and the ability to swap them back and forth has given them incredible flexibility. And I think the other great thing is that it has enabled airlines to bring slightly older aircraft in the fleet back into operation with this more flexible approach.”
What do you think is next for aviation in terms of global cargo delivery?
“Well, we’ve found a way to optimise aircraft in terms of cargo delivery, so I think what needs to be done next is to optimise the utilisation of them. And packaging will play a key role in that. We often receive parcels in needless amounts of packaging and they are taking up unnecessary space and slowing down operations. And I think digitisation can play a key role to help consolidate cargo by ensuring optimum cubic metres and weight are utilised. But this will also help to ensure that routes are optimised and ultimately lead to a more sustainable way of doing things.”
For more information, to contact or collaborate…
you can contact Cristian on Yocova via his personal profile.
Watch John Walton and Cristian discuss these topics in person courtesy of our Yocova on Air episode.
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Author: Yocova, with special thanks to John Walton
Published 09 May 2023
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