Legal background for Baltic.AirCargo.Net initiative is the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, i.e. „... to make the Baltic Sea Region an accessible and attractive place, and to improve internal and external transport links“. In fact, transport issues are especially important for BSR since the distances internally and to the rest of Europe are very long and the conditions for traffic are difficult.
Till 2009 the air cargo market had been expanding in Europe and BSR, however not so rapidly as passenger air transport. The growth of the airfreight is mostly driven by business internationalization as well as decreasing air transport costs due to improving efficiency and strong competition among air carriers.
Project addresses to:
- Structural challenges: Regional airports act without a clear picture of current situation on the international air cargo market and its future perspectives. Regional industrial landscape is rapidly changing, conventional transport services are not able to fulfill new needs of logistics.
- ICT challenges: Absence of a common ICT infrastructure prevents growth of air cargo flights in the regional airports and causes a stagnant economic, airport and hinterland development.
- Network challenges: Air-cargo process' players act mostly isolated. Each region (airport & hinterland) has its own strategies, recourses, infrastructure, state of knowledge, economic & boundary conditions. Co-operation between regional authorities with airports lack behind possibilities.
