The shifting direction in U.S. manufacturing supply chains is triggering changes in airfreight flows. The Wall Street Journal reports that international freight forwarders are increasingly hiring their own aircraft and seeking alternatives to America’s congested air hubs, in a strategy that is starting to reset the country’s air cargo map.
Regional airports like South Carolina’s Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport and Chicago Rockford International Airport are benefitting as manufacturers and logistics middlemen look for faster paths to factories.
The forwarders are driven partly by congestion at the big hubs, but they are also following the growth in manufacturing across South and Southwest America. Car makers and other industrial suppliers are boosting production in South Carolina, near Greenville-Spartanburg. And DSV is adding chartered service at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, a secondary site in Phoenix, as contract chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is investing heavily in Arizona.
