Etihad's Crystal Cargo Hit $220m in Three Years — Roessler Did That

US$220 million in cargo revenue, three years after launching from zero. That's the number Ingo Roessler co-built at Etihad Airways' Crystal Cargo unit — and it won the fledgling carrier a 'Cargo Airline of the Year' accolade before the division was even four years old.

Now Chief Commercial Officer and partner at Innovative Software SARL, where he promotes the EDIfly transmission and message-handling technology alongside CEO Richard Stokes (ex-SITA) and Anders Dam Jensen (ex-CHAMP), Roessler has spent four decades moving freight by air, rail and everywhere between.

His route into the trade was classic old-school: an apprenticeship with Lufthansa in Cologne in 1984 — "a much-coveted education in those days" — followed by route manager posts at German Cargo Services from 1987. In 1992, German Railways headhunted him as Executive Assistant on the project that rebuilt the rail grid between East and West Germany after reunification.

Chapman Freeborn's iconic chairman Russi Batliwala lured him back to air cargo in 1997. After a partnership at Capitol Int'l GSA, he joined Etihad's founding team in 2004 to build Crystal Cargo from scratch. Then came the Middle East circuit: Royal Jordanian and later Gulf Air CEO Samer Majali convinced him in 2007 to reorganize RJ's air cargo division, before a return to Europe in 2010 and the pivot into cargo software.

What's the strangest thing he's flown?

Screwworms. Chochliomyia Hominivorax, the New World Screwworm, to be precise. Roessler's German Cargo Services team supported an FAO campaign with DC8-73F flights, fully laden with sterilised fly larvae, running six months without interruption from Tuxtla, Mexico, to Tripoli, Libya.

"I had read about this dangerous pest potentially killing warm-blooded animals in the whole of Africa in the German magazine 'Stern' before we offered our solution," he recalled. The pest — larval flies that infest living tissue of warm-blooded animals — threatened livestock across an entire continent. Air freight was the delivery mechanism.

What does he think went wrong in air cargo?

Plenty. "I have seen too little change, really," Roessler said of his four decades in the industry. His sharpest jab lands on IATA: the association "failed to create a successful programme in air cargo like passenger e-ticketing."

His consolation is generational. "Finally, there is a new generation of air cargo managers that understand the importance of IT-driven processes and collaboration."

He reserves a dry eye-roll for tech fashion, too. "We now do API. Many people use this without the slightest idea what it entails."

One regulation he'd write tomorrow

Roessler would ban freight that costs more to fly than it pays for — with dangerous goods first in line. In his view, DG rates don't come close to reflecting "the huge risk by far for all operators."

The business lesson, learned the hard way

"A new project is only won, after you have collected the monies from the last invoice." Every forwarder reading this just nodded.

Quick answers

• Dream job as a child? GM of a hotel, near the Baltic Sea by Lübeck.
• Swap jobs for a day? Captain of a 20,000 TEU container vessel.
• Best airport? Singapore Changi — on-blocks to downtown hotel lobby, checked bags included, in 45 minutes or less, and improving continuously since his first landing there in 1988.
• Air cargo mascot? A chameleon: "Ready to adapt to any situation."
• Desert island kit? Beans, bicycle, boat. Practical, in order of urgency.
• Coffee or tea? Coffee — 100% Arabica.
• Guilty pleasure? Shaun the Sheep.
• Karaoke? Hotel California.

The childhood hotel dream explains itself: he grew up in a resort village on the Baltic shores, in an apartment adjacent to a summer holiday place near Lübeck. Hamburg — the 'Gate to the World' — born him in 1964.

Dinner guests would be pianist Lang Lang ("my favourite piano player," now living in Wiesbaden), Barack Obama ("the best US President I have experienced so far"), and Bill Gates — because Roessler would "like to understand how he managed to fool IBM."

His wife suggests he missed a calling as a Stasi spy; he reckons he "wasn't mean enough." He cooks and bakes decently — grandfather owned a bakery — and cycles Germany's riverbeds. Piano mastery and a parachute jump remain on the list.

The quote he carries: "They didn't know it was impossible. So, they did!" Misattributed to Mark Twain, correctly filed under air cargo start-ups. With EDIfly's push into message handling still gathering pace, Roessler's next impossible thing is already on the runway.