If you’ve ever wondered whether your goods would be better transported via air vs. sea freight, you’re not alone. There is a range of differences between air and sea freight, and their unique advantages and disadvantages must be weighed up for your circumstances.
Air freight forwarding services can see your business’ supply chain perform at optimal levels through speed and efficiency, with reasonable freight rates and personalised service. The speed and flexibility of air freight are unparalleled by any other form of transportation.
Alternatively, sea freight forwarding services allow for the bulk transport of goods at the most cost-effective rates. Traditionally, sea freight is more cost-effective and beneficial for importers/exporters forwarding large-scale cargo and/or high volume cargo that is not particularly time sensitive and can arrive in weeks or months rather than days.
Ultimately, the choice of whether you use air freight vs. sea freight will be dependent on your needs and personal situation. Factors such as cargo sensitivity, security, the urgency of delivery, size of goods, weight of the shipment, and budget must all be considered.
To make life easier, we’ve assembled a birdseye view of the advantages and disadvantages of air vs. sea freight for you.
The Advantages of Air Freight
There is a range of advantages of air freight, including:
- Speed. The greatest advantage of air freight is the ability to move cargo across oceans and continents faster than any other shipping method. The traditional borders of land and sea no longer apply, and you can potentially have your cargo on the opposite side of the earth in less than a day. Cargo is also unlikely to get stuck “in port”, which is a potential risk with sea freight.
- Weekly Consolidations. Based on the relationships your freight forwarder has with airlines, air freight consolidation allows for multiple cargo consignments to be sent together. This can result in more competitive air freight rates.
- Real-Time Tracking. This provides reassurance and certainty to customers because you have complete visibility of all air cargo statuses in real-time. Stockwell offers a track-and-trace service where you have a personalised dashboard to view all consignments in one place.
- Insurance. Air freight is often used for high-value goods, such as luxury retail, electronics, urgent medical deliveries or other expensive items. Having full-risk or partial-risk insurance against damage or loss is an important consideration for anyone shipping high-value items. Even though the odds of a plane crash are minimal (estimated as 1 in 5.4 million), insurance provides peace of mind against all kinds of risks involved in air freight.
The Disadvantages of Air Freight
There is a range of disadvantages of air freight, including:
- Higher Rates. Air freight often attracts a higher freight rate because of additional handling and packaging requirements. There is also less cargo volume available generally, so the law of supply and demand dictates that air freight will always be more expensive than shipping. Whether the premium is worth paying often comes down to the urgency of the delivery.
- Restrictions On Hazardous or Dangerous Goods. Hazardous or dangerous goods can’t always be shipped via air freight due to the increased risk posed if something were to go wrong. For example, passenger flights often will not carry hazardous cargo. Some types of cargo are not permitted on air freight at all, and alternative arrangements will be needed.
- Restrictions On Size and Weight. As opposed to the gigantic metric volume of container ships, planes are significantly restricted by their dimensions. The restrictions vary depending on whether you use a passenger flight or a freighter flight. Passenger flights typically don’t accept cargo with a height greater than 159cm, length greater than 320cm, or weight above 4,000kg.
The Advantages of Sea Freight
There is a range of advantages of sea freight, including:
- Flexible FCL Booking Options. Sea freight has the widest variety of options for an FCL booking. Without the need for consolidation and deconsolidation, FCL freight forwarding can result in more efficient transit times, and depending on the circumstances, your sea freight forwarder may secure you a more cost-effective shipping rate.
- Minimal Freight Rates for LCL. When you have less than a container load of cargo, cargo can be consolidated for transportation in a shared container. This is ideal for smaller consignments where you have the luxury of time.
- Move Large or Bulky Items. Some industries unavoidably require very large equipment for their operations, and this is one area where sea freight shines. Large, out-of-gauge project cargo (e.g. agricultural machinery or wind farm items) can be moved with the greatest efficiency, risk mitigation and competitive rates via sea freight.
The Disadvantages of Sea Freight
There is a range of disadvantages of sea freight, including:
- Greatest Risk of Loss. Of all the freight forwarding transportation options, shipping is the area most at risk of cargo loss. Though the probability is still very low, it remains the highest of all the global transportation methods. Storms and rough seas are the most common causes of lost containers.
- Environmental Impact. The shipping industry has traditionally been one of the biggest environmental polluters, owing to the huge quantities of oil consumed to power container ships. Up until 2016, the quality of the oil used in shipping was also very high in sulphur and contributed significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Thankfully, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is continuing to reduce the harmful impacts of shipping on the environment.
- It’s Slow. Sea freight booking is typically used for moving goods in bulk, and with that comes a decrease in speed. Sea freight can also be impacted by the activities of local ports, whether at the export origin or import destination. Queueing, port backlogs, industrial action, and bottlenecks are the most common disadvantages of sea freight.
Our Options for Air vs. Sea Freight
Despite the ongoing challenges to the freight industry, Stockwell is making positive headway with our Australian-based, in-house booking office.
The Stockwell International FCL booking office provides our clients with suitable sea freight quote options for new FCL bookings and LCL bookings, on top of regular contract options. Our team can offer instant port-to-port rates and direct sea freight bookings to reduce the time it takes to book a container down to less than a day.
Alternatively, with a well-established network of major airlines and a wide-reaching network of offices, we are well equipped to offer competitive air freight forwarding rates with personalised service at optimum efficiency.
