Air cargo delivers for Valentine’s Day

Did you buy flowers for Valentine’s Day? It’s likely the air cargo logistics sector helped get them to your home. Cargo airlines are indispensable for transporting flowers from the world’s growing regions to consumers on other continents. On Valentine’s Day, here is a rundown of how some carriers and service providers stepped up since the start of the year to help the floral industry get products to market.

Latin America

Nearly 70% of floral products move during the three-month period from Valentine’s Day to Mother’s Day. Transporting flowers requires intricate logistics processes, such as temperature-controlled equipment and storage. The floral industry continues to expand, reaching $9.5 billion in retail sales last year, a 47% increase over five years, according to consumer research specialist Circana. 

Avianca’s cargo division has had a record-breaking season shipping flowers from Colombia and Ecuador to North America, according to a company news release. To meet heightened demand, the airline doubled its regular capacity, prioritized on-time performance and improved processing efficiency. During the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, Avianca operated about 300 freighter flights, carrying about 18,000 tons of flowers to key hubs like Miami and Los Angeles. The airline expanded its U.S. operations team by 30% and made other investments to support the increased demand. 

Avianca said it reduced flower processing and delivery times by over 57% in Miami, improving customer satisfaction.

Avianca Cargo and Mexican subsidiary AeroUnion operate six Airbus A330-200 production freighters. Avianca plans to add two Airbus A330 converted freighters in 2025. Their delivery has been delayed more than six months by labor shortages and manufacturing snafus at Elbe Flugzeugwerke GmbH, the Airbus affiliate doing the aftermarket redesign of the aircraft to freighters.

Miami International Airport is the largest gateway in the United States for flowers, handling more than 90% of all imports by air. The airport authority projects  that more than 1,500 tons of cut flowers will arrive daily in the first two months of the year, a 3% increase over the airport’s record-breaking peak season in 2024. It expects to receive 90,154 tons of flowers valued at more than $400 million during this year’s Valentine’s Day rush.

Flowers are MIA’s largest imported product by weight, accounting for nearly 360,000 tons of annual freight worth $1.65 billion. The airport has the nation’s most extensive air route network with Colombia and Ecuador, the two top flower-producing countries in the region, which account for about 86% of all flowers imported to the U.S. by air. Twelve all-cargo airlines provide service from Colombia, and nine airlines have freighter service from Ecuador. 

Latam Cargo, the cargo subsidiary of Chile-based Latam Group, said it completed more than 420 departures from Bogota and Medellin, Colombia, and Quito, Ecuador, in the past 21 days to deliver flowers to the United States and Europe.  The group transported nearly 25,000 tons of flowers to the U.S.

Latam operates 21 Boeing 767-300 converted freighters. To bolster capacity during the Valentine’s season, the company leased three additional freighters from third-party operators.

C.H. Robinson, a major third-party logistics provider, said it is helping growers, retail stores and grocers navigate one of the busiest floral seasons in years. 

The Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based company moves seven-to-10 million boxes of flowers each year through its temperature-controlled network, managing handoffs across multiple modes of transportation. The process involves coordinating shipments from farms to the airport in Ecuador and Colombia, accepting air shipments at its Miami airport warehouse, refrigerated trucking and direct store deliveries to more than 7,500 U.S. retail locations. It recently enhanced its consolidation program in Colombia and Ecuador, further streamlining delivery for shippers. 

Africa

Israel-based Challenge Group, with all-cargo subsidiaries operating out of Liege, Belgium, and Malta, two months ago began flying a Boeing 767-300 freighter to Nairobi, Kenya, once a week to move flowers to Europe. It is the first time Challenge Group has operated commercial service to Africa. Since then, the carrier has  tripled capacity by upgrading certain flights with a Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet, the company said in a news release this week.

Meanwhile, Challenge’s ground handling unit in Liege has unloaded more than 30 flights from various customers, transporting more than 3,000 tons of fresh flowers.

Global ground handling agent Swissport International said it has expanded its “flower corridor” infrastructure to Amsterdam and Liege, allowing for temperature-controlled, end-to-end transport of fresh flowers from Kenya to Europe and extending shelf life by up to a week. 

Swissport said it expects to handle more than 250 million flowers at its air cargo center in Nairobi. The extra loads of flowers from Kenyan farms were transported globally by 35 additional freighter flights, increasing the total number of flights at Nairobi airport for a typical Valentine’s season by more than 50%.

Swissport’s high-speed vacuum cooling process during acceptance and specialized equipment for the journey from warehouse to aircraft ensure flowers stay in a predefined temperature range.

The company invested over two years in additional temperature-controlled space in Amsterdam and Liege but also added loading bridges for pallets and containers, as well as a fast lane for expedited transport through the warehouse from the aircraft to delivery trucks. The actions helped triple the facilities’ loading capacity and reduce overall delivery times. 

Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.

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