Air Planning Manager

Air Planning Manager

SUMMARY:

As an Air Planning Manager, you will lead a team of regional planners and will be responsible for routing, planning, consolidation, optimization and procurement activities for air export activities originating from your region. You take ownership of the region’s air freight P&L and are constantly looking for ways to maximize profitability while always meeting customer transit time requirements. 

You lead all planning & consolidation activities originating from your region

• Using forward-looking visibility tools, you’re monitoring capacity needs based upon projected demand and making procurement decisions to adjust to forecast.
• Manage your region’s allocation schedule and dynamically make adjustments to maximize revenue opportunities 
• Steering air cargo to your gateway to maintain hard allocations and mitigate exposure to dead freight 
• Optimizing consolidations and maximizing cost reduction by assessing trade-offs of customer transit times and cost per kg
• Manage daily reporting to spot patterns and opportunities to route, consolidate and procure more effectively. 

You supplement fixed capacity, by leading local procurement and partner with your regional air freight manager on fostering carrier relationships

• Engage with local carrier relationships and negotiate local contracts for a variety of different contract types. 
• Manage carrier quality through on-time performance reporting, milestone timeliness and billing accuracy. You run monthly business reviews with carrier partners and foster a ‘win-win’ attitude. 
• Participate in local market association meetings, obtain market intelligence from carriers and proactively leverage that intelligence to drive profitability in your planning operation. 
• Partner with your regional air freight manager on executing global airline strategies. 

Oversee and ensure high quality execution of day-to-day tasks and adherence to SLAs

• People management/leading the regional team of planning associates 
• Forecast and anticipate future staffing needs required to operate and scale; define short and long term headcount planning; in close consultation with regional air freight team, lead the recruitment process
• Train the team and ensure they have all required tools, knowledge, and skills to execute their duties
• Develop people into roles, while taking into account individual skills & interests and company need
• Continually monitor and improve all internal performance metrics, such as quote response times, cost/sell database population and integrity, bill audits, dispute execution
• Document all processes to serve as central references and training collateral

You'll bring:

• BA/BS degree and 5+ years of experience at a freight consolidator or a freight forwarder
• Strong leadership skills and experience managing large teams
• Process and detail-oriented
• Able to balance competing priorities, particularly global alignment and standardization with regional specialization
• Market knowledge and expertise with respect to imports and/or exports from a sales, operational, and procurement perspective. 
• Inclination to think-outside-the-box to always find a better solution or alternative, while remaining grounded in numbers and metrics
• Desire to “build a better machine” and get irritated when things aren’t optimal
• Excellent communication, interpersonal and organizational skills