Sea Air Transport

Hamburg is the undisputed logistics capital of Germany. The economic success of the metropolitan region was in the past essentially due to the “wet” ports. As well as the sea ports, the Hamburg airport is becoming increasingly important, especially when it is a case of the rapid and safe transport of high-value and/or urgently needed products.

The airfreight developments of the last few years and the airfreight forecasts for the metropolitan region of Hamburg lead one to expect a substantial further increase in airfreight during the next few years.

In addition to airfreight, there are increasingly also logistic solutions in which various carriers and their corresponding advantages are combined. So-called sea-air transport is one of these solutions.

In this combined form of sea transport and air transport, goods are frequently transported out of the Asian region by ship to particular depots, to then be transported the rest of the way by plane. Advantages of these combined transport chains are the lower costs compared with pure air transport and the quicker availability of the goods compared with pure sea transport in container ships.

These transports are to a certain extent already being used by companies in the Hamburg metropolitan region. In addition to goods-importing, however, direct freight-only flights in Hamburg also offer advantages for the exporting of goods. Long driving times to the European cargo hubs such as e.g. Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Luxemburg can be avoided and the goods can be loaded at Hamburg and fed directly into the global airfreight networks. This can mean a saving in time and costs and an in increase in service quality; in short, an important competitive advantage.