Aircraft charters prove their worth during Cambodia-Thailand border closure

The Asian offices of leading aircraft charter specialist, Air Charter Service, have been exceptionally busy over the past month arranging almost 100 charter flights with more than 5,000 tons of cargo, following the closure of the Thailand-Cambodia land border.

Brendan Toomey, CEO of ACS Singapore, commented: “The closure of the Thailand-Cambodia border meant that all road transport stopped immediately, leading to significant logistical disruptions across multiple industries which rely heavily on the cross-border supply chain. Just-in-time manufacturers especially started to run up costs, meaning they needed to find alternative solutions quickly to maintain operations and prevent shutdowns.

“It was at this point that several customers came to us for cargo charter flights as a solution to the headache. At first there was a lot of automotive cargo that needed to move, sometimes 100 tons at a time, but soon after we started receiving requests for consolidated cargo flights consisting of goods from multiple industries.

“To date we have arranged almost 100 charter flights between the two countries, carrying over 5,000 tons of cargo in total. The flights, which were loaded in both directions, ran between Bangkok in Thailand and either Siem Reap or Phnom Penh in Cambodia. This is another example of aircraft charters really proving their worth in extreme situations.”