Companies already operating in Jönköping airport

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Road transportation

Companies often use road transportation when shipping goods, especially in Europe, where transport distances are relatively short. Motor carriers are mostly a part of every logistics company’s supply chain and almost every logistics operation utilizes the motor truck. The main goods transported by motor carriers are general commodities, household goods, heavy machinery, liquid petroleum products and building materials. The major advantage of this transportation mode is its inherent ability to provide service to any location. The shipments go directly from the shipper to the final destination, bypassing any terminal area and consolidation time. That is why motor transportation provides lower transit time than rail and water, but still higher than air transportation (Langley et al., 2009).

Rail transportation

Rail as a transportation mode is capable of transporting all commodities tendered for transportation. Railroads are suitable for long-distance and large-volume movers such as heavy or bulky shipments. The main advantages using rail transportation is the longdistance movement in large quantities at low price rate. Forests, mines and agriculture products are the main product categories, which are transported by using railroads. The main disadvantage of rail transportation is long transportation time, which can be covered from clients’ point of view with high level of security (Langley et al., 2009). Rail service is relatively slow and inflexible, but less expensive compared to air or motor carriers (Wisner, Leong & Tan, 2005).

Air transportation

Air transportation is useful especially for materials with a low weight to value ratio and especially if the goods must be delivered quickly. This type of goods, are high value goods, e.g. electronic components, which are light but expensive (Bozarth & Handfield, 2013). Air transportation is still the least used transportation mode, but it is growing all the time. It is usually used in large domestic markets, such as Canada and the USA and for intercontinental transportations (Brewe, Button & Hensher, 2001). Air transportation plays an important role in just-in-time (JIT) production systems and most of the companies use air cargo to fine-tune intermediate input flows and to ship goods within highvalue to weight ratios (Dicken, 2011). “The air freight business is inherently competitive, because of the large number of direct and indirect routing that can be used to move a consignment, together with the ability in many cases of choosing between different means of movement; for example in the belly of passenger planes or of freight” (Kim & Park, 2012, p. 12).

Courier service

This type of express service is designed for goods (documents, small samples, patterns or important spare parts up to 5kg in weight), which are accompanied personally during all stages of transportation from sender to the final destination, without re-routing. These services are the fastest possible type of express delivery and also the most expensive way to carry goods (Brewe et al, 2001). Courier services are mainly found in innercity areas and use cars, motorcycles or bicycles. The services play a minor role in international deliveries, mainly due to high transportation costs. The most important feature of the courier service is the personal accompaniment of the transported goods. (Gile & Oyden-Grable, 2010).

Express delivery services

Express delivery service carries goods from the sender to the final destination by grouping together large numbers of units and distributing them internally with a flexible transportation program and with guaranteed delivery time (same day delivery, next day delivery within 24h). It is also possible in this type of service to negotiate the specific delivery time and that is why the main feature is the guaranteed delivery time. Specific forms of express delivery services are the express freight systems, which specialize in the express delivery of large amount of goods for industry. Long-term contracts exist and deliveries are undertaken for a few main clients. Express services are often tailored for specific industries (e.g. pharmaceutical sector) or are the result of the outsourcing of transportation from industry to logistics service providers (Brewe et al, 2001).

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The actors in the air freight industry

Air freight mainly operates in a forwarder-airline-forwarder format, in which airlines provide airport-to-airport transportation and forwarders handle the rest of the transport logistics. The sales agents of the airlines (freight forwarders) have evolved to become third-party operators who conclude contracts with the shippers and manage their cargo shipments (Zhang et al., 2007). In the beginning of 1990, the air freight industry consisted of agents whose roles were to provide point-to-point transportation, customs clearance and storage services and their main assets were aircraft, trucking vehicles and warehouses. At that time the three main players of the industry were (i) traditional airlines which carried passengers and cargo (in the belly hold of passenger aircraft) and were known as combination carriers; (ii) dedicated cargo airlines: which carry only cargo using dedicated freight aircraft and (iii) freight forwarders.

Air freight service providers and freight forwarding services

“Air freight forwarders are third-party brokers/operators who coordinate and manage cargo shipments. Operating in a forwarder-airline-forwarder format, they provide ground transport logistics for enterprises using in-house resources, partners and subcontracting agents.” (Yang, Hui, Leung & Chen, 2010, p. 1365). Air freight forwarders can be divided into three main categories: line-haul operators, integrated / courier / express operators and niche operators. Line-haul operators move cargo from airport to airport, and rely on freight forwarders to deal directly with customers. These operators can be divided into three categories: All cargo operators (they only move freight in dedicated freighter or cargo aircraft and cargo operators have the capability to move large volumes over long distances); Combination of passenger and cargo operations (they use dedicated cargo aircraft and also the belly holds in passenger aircraft to move freight); Passenger operators (they use the belly holds in passenger aircraft and are seen to offer the lowest prices and the least reliable service).

Table of Contents :

1 Introduction
- 1.1 Air freight industry
- 1.2 Jönköping area and airport
- 1.3 Problem definition
- 1.4 Purpose of study
- 1.5 Delimitations
- 1.6 Research questions
- 1.7 Thesis structure
2 Literature review
- 2.1 Supply chain management
- 2.2 Transportation modes
  - 2.2.1 Road transportation
  - 2.2.2 Rail transportation
  - 2.2.3 Water transportation
- 2.2.4 Air transportation
- 2.3 Different types of air cargo and express delivery
  - 2.3.1 Courier service
  - 2.3.2 Express delivery services
  - 2.3.3 Parcel delivery services
- 2.4 The actors in the air freight industry
- 2.5 Air freight service providers and freight forwarding services
- 2.6 Air freight traffic
  - 2.6.1 Traffic in Europe
  - 2.6.2 Traffic in Scandinavia
  - 2.6.3 The future
- 2.7 Airports
  - 2.7.1 Different size of airports
  - 2.7.2 Hub and spoke
  - 2.7.3 Location
  - 2.7.4 Relocation
- 2.8 Drivers and barriers
- 2.9 Summary of literature review
3 Methodology
- 3.1 Research philosophies
- 3.2 Research approaches and purpose
- 3.3 Research strategy
- 3.4 Method choices
- 3.5 Time horizons
- 3.6 Data collection and analysis
  - 3.6.1 Primary data
  - 3.6.2 Secondary data
- 3.7 Validity and reliability
4 Empirical findings
- 4.1 Jönköping Airport
  - 4.1.1 Operations, services and customers
  - 4.1.2 Location and infrastructure
  - 4.1.3 Challenges and future opportunities
  - 4.1.4 Summary
- 4.2 TNT Express
  - 4.2.1 Operations, services and customers
  - 4.2.2 Location and infrastructure
  - 4.2.3 Challenges and future opportunities
  - 4.2.4 Summary
- 4.3 Swedish Post
  - 4.3.1 Operations, services and customers
  - 4.3.2 Location and infrastructure
  - 4.3.3 Challenges and future opportunities
  - 4.3.4 Summary
- 4.4 Company A
  - 4.4.1 Operations, services and customers
  - 4.4.2 Location and infrastructure
  - 4.4.3 Challenges and future opportunities
  - 4.4.4 Summary
- 4.5 Company B
  - 4.5.1 Operations, services and customers
  - 4.5.2 Location and infrastructure
  - 4.5.3 Challenges and future opportunities
  - 4.5.4 Summary

5 Analysis and outcomes
- 5.1 Jönköping’s airport perspective
- 5.2 Companies already operating in Jönköping airport
- 5.3 Companies operating in other airports
- 5.4 Discussion
- 5.5 Outcomes
  - 5.5.1 Drivers
  - 5.5.2 Barriers
6 Conclusion and further contribution
- 6.1 Conclusions
- 6.2 Further contribution and generalization
List of references
- Appendices