St Helena air freight

We would like to advise all of our valued customers on St Helena, that we are currently looking at all route options for our air freight service to the Island, and we have been working to establish why there are issues arising in Joburg. We have been in contact with our agents in South Africa, along with Airlink and SHG, to discuss the unacceptable timeframe for our consignments arrival on Island, and to push for a resolution to this situation as quickly as possible.

There have now been numerous RJI consignments bumped from the flights, and we are receiving cargo notices from Airlink advising that this is due to “space restrictions”. When we investigate further, we are advised that passenger numbers are the main cause of these delays.

The order of cargo priority means that passengers, passenger luggage, perishables and medical take priority over commercial cargo, so there are plausible scenarios where other cargo would be pushed up the queue, however, there is no explanation that we can see, as to why other commercial cargo may be arriving before ours.

It completely defeats the purpose of sending, and paying more for an air freight service, if it is taking several weeks to arrive.  We fully understand and appreciate the frustration of our customers that are having air freight arrive much later than expected. We cannot provide an effective and reliable air freight service with these unacceptable delays.

We are pushing for the teams in Joburg to get this resolved as soon as possible and in the meantime, would like to apologise to all of our customers who have had air freight delayed.

Sincerely,

The Managing Directors of Richard James International