Race against the production line: Europe’s automotive airfreight pressure points

When a car plant is about to run out of parts, every hour of downtime has a price. For many carmakers, an emergency charter turns out to be the cheaper way out.

Imagine this scenario: a large car plant in Germany is facing a shortage of automotive parts, while three pallets of the required components are sitting in Bulgaria. They are too heavy to travel by on-board courier, and no scheduled airfreight service can meet the deadline.

A dedicated charter delivers the parts to the production site within eight hours of the initial request, helping the manufacturer avoid a potentially far more costly production stoppage. According to Isidro Nuñez Oñate, Senior Manager Cargo Charter – DACH and Automotive Expert at Chapman Freeborn, this is the calculation behind many time-critical automotive movements: the real cost is not always the aircraft, but what happens if the cargo arrives too late.

Why a small shipment can hold up a whole plant

Just-in-time production leaves little room for disruption. Assembly lines follow a fixed sequence, meaning that a delay at one stage can bring the entire operation to a standstill. According to the Siemens True Cost of Downtime report, an hour of idle time at a major automotive plant can cost up to $2.3 million.

“Car plants run like clockwork, so it takes very little to throw everything off,” explains Nuñez Oñate. “If the truck delivering parts for step four breaks down, or every windscreen needed for step ten turns out to be defective, the cars cannot move forward. Suddenly, the whole plant is at a standstill, with the costs continuing to rise for every hour production remains inactive.”

Even the most carefully planned supply chain cannot eliminate every disruption. Urgent requests may result from a planning or purchasing error, a quality issue requiring immediate replacement parts, or a breakdown in regular transport caused by traffic, strikes or severe weather.

Such requests arise across Europe’s main automotive production and supplier hubs, from Germany and the UK to Italy and Poland. The circumstances differ, but the problem is usually the same: a plant needs specific components by a fixed time, and the available road or scheduled airfreight options can no longer meet the deadline.

Down to the last minute

While some customers get in touch two or three days in advance, many requests arrive in the morning with the expectation that the parts will reach the plant that same day. In the most urgent cases, the decision is made shortly before the production line is expected to stop.

The team assesses every realistic option, including next flight out, on-board courier, scheduled airfreight, dedicated road transport and charter. The aim is to identify the most cost-effective solution that can still meet the deadline.

“If the shipment is too large for an on-board courier and scheduled services aren’t fast enough, a charter may become the only sensible choice,” Nuñez Oñate says.

The cost of standing still

“The customer has to compare the cost of the charter with the potential cost of a production stoppage. If an aircraft can get the required parts to the plant in time to keep the line running, the additional transport cost can quickly become secondary,” Nuñez Oñate explains.

In the Bulgarian case, the pallets were collected from the supplier and transported to Sofia Airport. An aircraft was positioned to fly the shipment to a regional airport near the German plant, with final delivery coordinated directly to the assembly site.

Troubles with lithium

Electric vehicles have not fundamentally changed the urgency of automotive shipments, but certain components can add another layer of operational complexity.

“From our operational perspective, EVs haven’t fundamentally changed the urgency. There can, however, be additional requirements for certain components due to dangerous goods regulations, which have to be taken into account even in a time-critical situation,” Nuñez Oñate says.

Storms, strikes and cancelled crossings

Strikes, extreme weather and disruption on roads and ferry routes can put pressure on automotive supply chains almost overnight. Nuñez Oñate also points to a route that gets less attention. Tunisia and Morocco have a large automotive supplier base, and supplier activity is growing in Algeria as well. These supply chains depend heavily on road and ferry links into Europe.

“If ferry services are disrupted by bad weather, strikes or other operational problems, there’s very little chance of recovering the lost time by road alone,” Nuñez Oñate says. “We’ve already seen bad weather in the Mediterranean disrupt ferries to the point where regular truck movements couldn’t run as planned. In those cases, urgent airfreight or charter has to bridge the gap very quickly to keep the assembly lines moving.”

Why most charters are last-minute

“From what we see operationally, most emergency requests are still reactive rather than planned in advance,” Nuñez Oñate says. In a global supply chain, it can be difficult to anticipate a shortage originating with a supplier on the other side of the world. What companies can control is how quickly they respond and how many transport options they have when the call comes.

The scale of the shipment may be small, but the operational risk is not. When conventional transport can no longer protect the production deadline, the cost of a charter must be measured against the much larger cost of standing still.

About Chapman Freeborn

With more than 50 years of experience and extensive global coverage, Chapman Freeborn provides private air passenger and cargo charter services for major corporations, governments, NGOs, relief agencies, and high net-worth individuals. The company is part of Avia Solutions Group, the world’s largest ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, and Insurance) provider, operating a fleet of 136 aircraft worldwide and the parent company of over 250 subsidiaries. The group offers a wide range of aviation solutions, including MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul), pilot and crew training, ground handling, and other related aviation services. Supported by 11,000 highly skilled aviation professionals, the group operates across six continents.

For more information, please visit www.chapmanfreeborn.aero