Air Courier Travel (cont.)

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How does being an Air Courier work?

As you probably know from previous trips abroad, once you arrive at your destination your baggage is personally checked by customs as soon as you land. When cargo is sent however it normally takes a number of hours after the plane has arrived before the cargo agents can get their hands on the goods. Even with express cargo there can be a delay of up to three or four hours from arrival. Believe it or not there are many, many companies who would gladly pay someone for a portion of their ticket in order to have their goods cleared through customs immediately rather than a few hours later.

This is all the air courier does - they ‘sell off’ a certain portion of their baggage allowance in exchange for a cheaper ticket. How much you have to give can vary on any given day. Sometimes it might be half of your total baggage allowance, and sometimes all you’ll have to do is carry some paper documents. No matter what you end up taking you’ll have to wait while customs inspect the goods and clears them. This takes longer than your normal baggage clearance but it’s nothing too inconvenient.

Is being an Air Courier legal?

Probably the first question that pops into someone’s head when I mention Air Courier work is if it’s legal or what if there was something in the package that you didn’t know about. Firstly, you’ll only be dealing with reputable companies in the first place, and secondly you get to sign a disclaimer that you are merely acting on behalf of the courier company or airline. Indeed, in most cases Customs will have already inspected the goods and will have issued paperwork to accompany the freight.

Airlines are well aware of the need for Air Couriers so the system works well and you are looked after all the way. Remember, there are so many instances where a saving of a few hours can mean everything to the sender. Consider spare parts for a production machine where every hour of downtime can cost a company literally thousands and thousands of dollars.

Paying for someone to accompany those items can be small change in such circumstances, and situations like that occur much more often that one would think. I once had a regular courier job flying to various points in Europe from London (completely free, and flying business class) carrying semi-conductor parts shipped in from the U.S. (some other lucky fellow got to do the U.S. to London trips). These parts were so important to manufacturing production lines that no expense was spared when they were required. And that’s the key point. All over the world, time-sensitive material is being moved from one place to another – and it needs an Air Courier to get it through Customs.