Chapman Freeborn China Already Doing The Business – Despite First Cargo
Charter Headache!
13th December 2004
Although our office in Beijing has only been established for 5 months,
CF Beijing’s George Mikhailov reports that already, he is very busy!
George moved from Russia to Beijing in 1992 to study at the Capital University
of Economics and Trade. Prior to joining Chapman Freeborn, he had previously
worked for a leasing company which provided aircraft to Russian airlines,
as well as assisting such airlines to set up their operations in China.
This involved working closely with both countries’ Civil Aviation Authorities
and over the years, George has built great working relationships also with
freight forwarders and cargo agents in China, Russia, Hong Kong, Taiwan
and Korea.
This was then supplemented with a short stint with a freight forwarder
which was organizing multimodal transport from China via Iran, Mongolia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Lithuania and Finland. All valuable
experience for this market.
Chapman Freeborn’s Beijing office formally opened in July and the team
there has already established many contacts with major Chinese freight forwarders,
Handling Agents, Airlines and so on. They are working on some major cargo
projects including long term aircraft leases, series and ad hoc charters
both domestically within China as well as some major international cargo
charter programmes.
Although in it’s infancy, CF China have already established a reputation
for working with other GSA operations across our global network to move
freight from China to other sometimes difficult destinations such as Africa,
Afghanistan, Iraq and South America.
George comments:"There is a real need for international airlines who require
assistance registering with the Chinese CAA and in particular in obtaining
traffic rights and route licenses in the region which can often take many
months. We are also helping airlines to build their customer base and work
with them as their cargo GSA. Furthermore, we have identified a niche in
offering charter solutions for special and dangerous cargo which cannot
be shipped on scheduled carriers to build further ad hoc opportunities.
It’s a very busy and exciting time for us."
The office’s first charter certainly called upon George’s varied experiences
and caused him several grey hairs. A New Zealand based forwarder requested
on behalf of their Turkish client, to move some furniture from Guangzhou
China to Astana, Kazakhstan, bound for the reconstructed airport there.
A DC8 was contracted for the flight but unfortunately just a couple of days
before the flight, they informed us that they could not operate the flight
after all.
The cargo was time critical and the departure point could not be altered
so the only solution was to find another aircraft and quickly. Of course,
we had already agreed a fixed price and we had the permits from the Chinese
CAA. It usually takes 15 days to get new permits and we had only three.
After some serious hard work, we located a Russian IL76, provided by Tesis
who co-operated incredibly well with us to meet the clients deadlines and
we were delighted to get the traffic rights rushed through by CAAC, despite
it being fifth freedom.
The end of this saga saw the right result – the cargo arrived on time,
as per our guarantee, the client was very happy George was very relieved,
although the whole experience left him with just a few new grey hairs!
Contact details for Chapman Freeborn Beijing
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