• Ground handling is the operational foundation of air cargo, with providers such as PrimeFlight Aviation Services managing ramp operations, cargo handling, aircraft cleaning and load planning across more than 200 US locations. Outsourcing gives airlines operational flexibility, but inconsistent performance can quickly become an airline-level service and reputational problem.
• Cargo security screening remains a critical bottleneck, particularly for freight travelling in the belly of US passenger aircraft, where every shipment must be screened before loading. Providers such as Andy Frain Services manage known shipper verification, physical screening and documentation, making regulatory compliance and turnaround speed equally important to maintaining reliable cargo flows.
• Labour shortages have increased the need for contingency handling, with staffing gaps sometimes leaving accepted freight stranded when normal handling processes fail. Carrier 911 provides expedited cargo recovery for time-sensitive shipments, reflecting the growing importance of emergency capacity as labour instability continues to affect US cargo facilities.

When a freighter lands, coordination, efficiency and speed are critical to ensuring cargo is handled and screened swiftly and correclty. If something goes wrong somewhere in that chain, it needs to be fixed fast.

The handling foundation
PrimeFlight Aviation Services operates at more than 200 locations across the United States. It provides ground handling, cargo handling, aircraft cleaning, and load planning for airlines and cargo carriers across major hubs and regional airports. When an airline does not want to run its own ramp operations, which most do not, PrimeFlight is the kind of company that ends up doing the work.

The outsourcing of ground operations to specialists like PrimeFlight has been standard practice in US aviation for years. Airlines shed those costs and hand the operational responsibility to a dedicated provider. That works well when the provider performs. When it does not, the airline takes the reputational hit anyway. So, the pressure on PrimeFlight and operators like it to maintain consistent performance across a very large and geographically dispersed network is significant and constant.

Cargo security screening
Cargo security screening sits at one of the most frustrating bottlenecks in the air freight supply chain. Every piece of cargo that moves in the belly of a commercial passenger aircraft in the United States has to be screened. That process, when it runs slowly or inconsistently, backs up the entire cargo acceptance chain and causes freight to miss its flight.

Andy Frain Services provides cargo screening and security solutions across US airports, covering the known shipper verification, physical screening, and documentation validation that certified cargo must clear before it can be loaded. Speed and regulatory accuracy are not competing objectives in this work. They have to coexist, and the companies that manage that balance reliably are the ones that airlines and freight forwarders stick with.

Solving problems swiftly
Labor shortages have been a persistent problem for US ground handling since 2021. Staffing gaps at cargo facilities mean that freight that has been accepted and needs to move sometimes gets stranded when normal handling channels break down. That is where Carrier 911 comes in.

Carrier 911 provides expedited air cargo recovery services, mobilizing when standard handlers cannot deliver and ensuring that time-sensitive shipments still reach their destination without missing critical supply chain windows.

The demand for that kind of emergency recovery capability has grown in direct proportion to the labor instability that has affected US cargo facilities over the past four years.

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