Pacific Air Cargo expands to Sydney, Guam and is eyeing Mexico

Heading into its 25^th anniversary next year, tiny Pacific Air Cargo, (PAC), which has been operating for most of its existence with a single leased freighter aircraft, has added giant Atlas Air to its Kalita Air ACMI partner network and is providing shippers with added capacity through eight 747-400F ACMI weekly flights from Los Angeles to Honolulu and on to Guam.

Pacific Air Cargo, which is technically an international freight forwarder, is no stranger to partnering with global all-cargo airlines. It has had a quarter century relationship with Ypsilanti Township, Michigan-based Kalitta Air from which it currently leases one of the company’s nineteen 747-400 freighters. Indeed, Kalitta Air leased jet freighters to Pacific Air Cargo from the early days of its operation.

Pacific Expansion

Today, Pacific Air Cargo is in expansion mode and moving air cargo freight under an extensive Road Feeder Service agreement from all the primary US gateways to Los Angeles and Honolulu and throughout the South Pacific including weekly services to American Samoa, Guam and beyond. Currently, the airline is pondering services from Hawaii direct to Mexico.

If it does, Pacific Air Cargo will not shell out capital to acquire a jet freighter to fly from the Hawaiian Islands, as its CEO explains. “We are talking to another longtime partner, Asia Pacific Airlines, based in Guam, that operates a B757 freighter for us from Honolulu to Pago Pago in American Samoa on a weekly basis,” Tanja Janfruechte, president and CEO of Pacific Air Cargo, told the American Journal of Transportation in an exclusive interview. “Right now, we are in the feasibility stage but very interested in connecting Asia with Mexico via Honolulu.”

Additionally, Pacific Air Cargo recently began working on an interline partnership with UPS to deliver and pickup cargo in Sydney, its first move into the Australia market.

Freightos WebCargo

In August, PAC took another step towards wooing international freight for its transpacific routes by partnering with Freightos’ WebCargo digital booking and payment platform. The collaboration gives the all-cargo airline greater exposure and capacity to a global network of forwarders and shippers in dozens of US mainland cities and beyond, improved booking efficiency and enhanced customer service capabilities, the carrier said in a press statement.

Pacific Air Cargo has forged its growth through a series of partnerships and lease agreements over the years with major airlines, rather than expand its fleet with acquisitions. Janfruechte describes the strategy as a series of freight handoffs to and from its airline partners.

For example, on some flights, Pacific Air Cargo operates from Los Angeles International Airport to Honolulu on the 747-400F it leases from Kalitta Air. Then Kalitta itself takes over the service and flies the aircraft to Asia where it picks up US-bound cargo and transports it back to the mainland.

The business model for Pacific Air Cargo was developed by Janfruechte’s mentor and first boss out of college, Beti Ward, its founder and first CEO, who had launched American International Cargo (AIC) a Hawaii-based freight forwarder. Janfruechte, whose family worked for Lufthansa, broke into logistics as Ward’s administrative assistant.

AIC was sold to Kitty Hawk Aircargo, a Dallas freighter operator which went bankrupt in 2007. Ward exited Kitty Hawk before it collapsed and moved to Honolulu to start Pacific Air Cargo in 2000. Janfruechte, who spent a year with Lynden, now named Lynden International, (“a fantastic company,” she says), moved to Hawaii to join Ward, and worked her way up through the ranks handling operations, charters and sales. When Ward passed away in 2018, Janfruechte succeeded her as Pacific Air Cargo’s chief executive.

With Janfruechte at the carrier’s controls, Pacific Air Cargo continued to build on Ward’s original vision which she developed at American International--export fresh flowers from the US mainland to Hawaii and transport pineapples and papayas on the backhaul. However, the 747-400F with a maximum payload of 250,000 pounds, has the capacity to transport large, outsized or project cargo so the freighter was able to diversify its loads beyond island fruits and perishables. Good thing because the pineapple and papaya backhaul traffic evaporated more than 20 years ago.

Around that time, Pacific Air Cargo began forging interline partnerships with established mostly Asian-based international airlines. From the outset, the shift in strategy made sense and has been a driver of the Hawaiian -based cargo airline’s growth ever since. The Asian passenger airlines fly belly-loaded export cargo from the Far East and South Pacific across to Honolulu where it is transferred and consolidated aboard Pacific Air Cargo’s 747-400F for the 3,000-mile leg to Los Angeles International and often beyond.

Interline Agreements

Interestingly, Pacific Air Cargo has interline agreements or essentially partnerships with a virtual Who’s Who of Transpacific Airlines. Among them: Japan Airlines, Asiana, Korean Air Lines, Air New Zealand, Qantas, ANA and Air Premia, a Seoul, Korea-based passenger airline with belly freight capacity.

Janfruechte says Pacific Air Cargo’s 747-400 freighter along with the Atlas Air 747-400 freighter “is the perfect aircraft for us” because they can accommodate various sized cargoes tendered to them in Honolulu by their Asian and South Pacific partners. “We can handle the big, the bad and the ugly and that’s what makes this (Transpacific) route successful for us.”

What triggered Pacific Air Cargo’s expansion, particularly its switch from six to eight flights weekly from Honolulu to Los Angeles and its partnership with Atlas Air? “When Aloha Air Cargo freighters left that market on June 1 this year, we immediately partnered with Asia Pacific Airlines with its B757F for the extra two flights,” says Janfruechte who is based at the company’s headquarters Los Angeles International. “But we realized we needed a bigger plane with additional 747 capacity to handle the Aloha Cargo volume at shifted over to us.”

She further says the airline has beefed up its workforce from 100 to 175 people to accommodate the recent “surge” in e-commerce freight in the Hawaiian Islands. Many of the additional staff has been assigned to work in the carrier’s expanded ground handling operation. The diversification has been a “real struggle and a challenge in Honolulu” to attract and hire qualified manpower, she adds.

Meanwhile, as the airline grows, its 70,000 square foot cargo facility at Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport is “maxed out but we’re just making it work,” the CEO says. “There are not a lot of options to expand cargo buildings here.”

Right now, Pacific Air Cargo is concentrating on building mainland US traffic for its recently launched 747-400 flights to Guam and to American Samoa. “The Pacific is really our niche,” says Janfruechte.

But even with jumbo freighters, the all-cargo airline says it does not have to scramble for loads. “We have longtime partnerships with other airlines, all the big forwarders and a couple of integrators,” she says. “Seventy-five to 80% of our space is pre-booked or allocated. It is not just flowers. We move a lot of horses, vehicles, and military aircraft engines. With our capacity, we can handle just about anything.”