Carrier sets completion deadline for Inchon cargo terminal
Korean Air plans to complete its cargo terminal at the new Inchon international airport in time for the airport's opening in 2000, a senior executive says.
Korean Air vice-president and general manager of the airline's cargo marketing team Ji-Young Lee said the terminal, which will cover 63,500 square metres, would be about four times larger than the present terminal building at Seoul's Kimpo international airport.
'Initial investment for the Korean Air cargo terminal is estimated at US$210 million,' he said.
The terminal, which will be equipped with up-to-date cargo-handling facilities, will be able to process one million tonnes of cargo upon completion of the initial phase in 2000.
Its handling capacity will rise to 1.8 million tonnes when the third phase is completed in 2009.
In comparison, Hongkong Air Cargo Terminals (Hactl) handled an estimated 1.7 million tonnes at Kai Tak airport last year, 200,000 more than its design capacity.
Hactl is investing HK$8 billion to construct an air-cargo terminal, SuperTerminal 1, at the new airport at Chek Lap Kok when it opens this year, with a design capacity of 2.6 million tonnes.
Mr Lee said Korean Air's Kimpo terminal, which was built in 1988, would serve as a city cargo terminal similar to TACT in Tokyo.
'Except urgent or special cargo, most of the general cargo will be received and delivered at the present Kimpo terminal by shuttle trucking service,' he said.
Though Korean Air has continually improved its Kimpo facility, which has a design capacity of 500,000 tonnes per year, it is almost saturated.
In order to avoid congestion at Kimpo airport in the meantime, the carrier has been co-operating with the Korea Customs Service to implement new customs clearance procedures based on electronic data interchange (EDI) for fast cargo processing.
The use of EDI, which enables 24-hour customs clearance, has shortened document inspection time drastically and helped to stretch the terminal's cargo-handling capacity beyond its planned maximum.
'This new EDI service also helps to increase service levels by decreasing irregularities, which were caused by terminal congestion,' Mr Lee said.
In a separate development, Korean Air will build a cargo terminal building at John F. Kennedy International Airport in the United States.
The building will be slightly bigger than the Kimpo terminal. It will have an 18,100 sq m facility with up-to-date cargo-processing operations. It is scheduled to open in October 1999.
The carrier will invest about US$90 million to build the facility, which will have a handling capacity of 250,000 metric tonnes.
Korean Air, a subsidiary of the Hanjin Group, has a fleet of 112 aircraft which are less than eight years old.
A recent Airport Council International report ranked Kimpo airport, which handles 1.36 million tonnes annually, as the seventh-largest airport in the world in 1996 in terms of tonnage handled. The figure includes 786,000 tonnes of domestic cargo.
