The Air Cargo World team was treated this week to a behind-the-scenes tour of the cargo operations at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA). There, the Port of Seattle’s Air Cargo team – Tom Green, senior manager for air cargo development, Ken Galka, air cargo operations manager, and Patrick Haley, air cargo facilities manager…
Currently, about 425,000 tonnes of cargo moves through SEA per year. That amount of cargo traffic is a good fit for the airport’s facilities, as Green said, “You like about one square foot per metric tonne of cargo handled,” and the airport’s current cargo facilities include about 425,000 square feet of space. Eventually, the cargo team would like to increase cargo handling capacity at the airport to about 750,000 tonnes, and development taking place at the airport indicates SEA is well on its way to increasing throughput.
One such development is the International Arrivals Facility currently under construction and scheduled to open during the fourth quarter of 2019. That facility will allow the airport’s development team to bring in new carriers to the airport, like Cathay Pacific, which is adding four-times-weekly service nonstop between SEA and Hong Kong (HKG) in April 2019. While the airport is always looking to add additional freighter service, a substantial amount of cargo also travels in the bellies of passenger jets like the A350-900s Cathay will use for its SEA-HKG service – making the addition of the new terminal another source of cargo moving into and from the airport.