Museums will
often prefer to hand-carry small and fragile artworks such as
jewels, ivory pieces, manuscripts, and delicate paintings which
may suffer with temperature changes. A hand-carry has many advantages:
it is much easier to control how the packed object is
handled; the object travels in the pressurized and heated cabin
of the aircraft rather than in the un-pressurized cargo hold;
and overall transit time is much quicker.
When shipped
as air cargo, small objects are generally inside small crates,
and the smaller the crate the more likely it is to be mishandled
or even misplaced in the cargo terminal.
For short
distance flights within the European Union (EU), Ireland, Norway
& Switzerland it is quite common for an airline to change
the size of the aircraft at the last minute. If this happens
a crate that was supposed to travel inside an airline container
on board an airbus A320 may suddenly be loaded onto a smaller
aircraft that doesn’t take palletized cargo, thereby ending
up in the hold along with passenger luggage. To avoid this possibility
Museums in Europe may prefer to use hand-carry for small shipments
on short-distance flights.
It is very
important to know that the European Union put in place a new
regulation on October 4 2006 – rule CE 1546/1006 –
regarding EU, Ireland, Norway and Switzerland. This regulation
states that luggage over dimensions 56 cms length x 45 cms high
x 25 cms width will no longer be accepted in cabin, unless there
has been a specific authorization from the airline.
Even with
this authorization the Captain is the master on board his plane
and he can refuse to take a package if he considers its size
or shape to be dangerous.
If an extra
seat is required to accommodate the hand-carry box, it is important
to make the reservation as early as possible to ensure two seats
are available together in the Business Class section of the
plane.
Export customs
clearance is generally done in a Customs Office (commercial
operations customs office) inside the passenger terminal before
passing through airport security. The logistics agent should
escort the courier to this office to present all the documents
for export clearance.
|
Ancient manuscripts need careful handling and
climate control
|
Finally,
remember that even though you are working with a logistics agent
who is authorized by the local civil aviation authority to pre-screen
cargo shipments, their authorization does not apply in the passenger
terminal. Your hand-carry will have to pass through normal airport
security screenings unless special arrangements can be made
in advance to have this done in a private room.
Hand-carry
can also happen by train in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands
& Switzerland. In this case your logistics agent should
be able to obtain a special authorization at the train station
security office so that they can assist the courier right onto
the train.
It is becoming
more difficult to ship by hand-carry, mainly due to the increased
security measures but museums will go on using hand-carry for
small objects, manuscripts or artworks which are very sensitive
to the temperature changes because it seems the safest way of
moving those objects.
At Crown
Fine Art we handled many hand-carry loans for several exhibitions
during 2008 including ivory pieces traveling from Norway and
Denmark to Paris; manuscripts traveling from Paris to Germany;
and ivory from Paris to China.
Sylvie
Fournier Hausherr, Art & Exhibition Manager
Crown Fine Arts, France
