Dangerous Goods Air Freight
Hazardous cargo by air, classified and documented properly — because the aircraft is the one place a mistake cannot be corrected in transit.
Air is the least forgiving mode for hazardous cargo
A sea container that develops a problem can be isolated, vented or discharged at the next port. An aircraft has none of those options. That is why dangerous goods by air are governed more tightly than by any other mode, why acceptance checks at the airline counter are genuinely adversarial, and why a rejected consignment is rejected outright rather than fixed on the spot.
The consequence for a shipper is that almost all of the work happens before the cargo leaves your factory. By the time it reaches the terminal, the classification, the packaging, the marking and the declaration either satisfy the rules or they do not.
What actually counts as dangerous goods
More than most exporters expect. The category is defined by hazard class, not by whether the item feels risky, and a great deal of ordinary industrial and consumer cargo falls inside it.
- Lithium batteries — in equipment, packed with equipment, or shipped alone, each with different rules
- Paints, adhesives, solvents, thinners and most coatings
- Aerosols of any kind, including cosmetics and cleaning products
- Compressed and liquefied gases, including small cylinders inside equipment
- Corrosives — battery acid, cleaning chemicals, some industrial reagents
- Magnetised material, which is restricted because of its effect on aircraft instruments
- Machinery containing residual fuel or oil, a routine trap on used equipment
Lithium batteries are the single biggest source of trouble
Battery rules are the most frequently changed and the most frequently breached part of the whole regime. State of charge limits, watt-hour thresholds, packing instruction, whether the cells are loose or installed, and the carrier’s own embargo — all of these vary, and several airlines apply restrictions stricter than the baseline rules.
The failure mode is nearly always the same: an exporter ships a product containing a battery, describes it as general cargo because the battery is incidental to the product, and the consignment is stopped at acceptance. We identify batteries at the quoting stage and confirm the specific carrier’s position before booking, because “it is allowed in principle” and “this airline will carry it next Tuesday” are different statements.
What we do
The work is documentation and packaging discipline, carried out in a fixed order because each step depends on the one before it.
- Classification — proper shipping name, UN number, class and packing group, established from the safety data sheet rather than guessed
- Packaging to the correct UN specification, with the certification marks intact and the inner quantities within limits
- Marking and labelling — hazard labels, handling labels, orientation arrows and the shipper details
- The shipper’s declaration for dangerous goods, prepared and signed by trained staff
- Carrier and routing selection, since acceptance policies differ and some transit points are ruled out entirely
- Air waybill annotation and the acceptance check before the cargo reaches the counter
The safety data sheet is the starting point
Everything derives from the SDS, and a surprising number of consignments arrive with one that is out of date, in the wrong language, or for a similar product rather than the exact one being shipped. That is not a paperwork nicety — the classification comes from that document, and a wrong classification propagates into the packaging, the labels and the declaration.
We ask for the current SDS before quoting. If it does not exist or does not match the product, that is the first problem to solve, and it is far cheaper to solve it then than after a rejection.
What we will not do
We will not describe hazardous cargo as general cargo to get it accepted, and we will not sign a declaration we are not satisfied with. Both happen in the market, and both put the aircraft, the crew and your company at risk — the liability for a mis-declaration sits with the shipper, not with whoever filled in the form.
If a consignment cannot go by air within the rules, we will say so and quote it by sea instead. That is a slower answer and it is the correct one.
Asked often about this service
Can we ship lithium batteries by air from India?
Often yes, but it depends on the cell type, the watt-hour rating, whether they are loose or installed in equipment, the state of charge and the individual airline’s policy — several are stricter than the baseline rules. We confirm the specific carrier’s position before booking rather than after.
Who signs the shipper's declaration?
It must be prepared and signed by someone holding current dangerous-goods training, and the legal responsibility for its accuracy rests with the shipper. We prepare and sign it on consignments we handle, working from your safety data sheet — which is why we insist that document is current and matches the product exactly.
What happens if the airline rejects the consignment?
It stops at the terminal and comes back to you, with the freight and handling already incurred. That is why the checks happen at our end first. A rejection is almost always a classification, packaging or labelling failure that was visible before the goods left the factory.
Is dangerous goods air freight much more expensive?
Yes, and the cost is in the packaging, the documentation and the restricted capacity rather than in the rate per kilo alone. Fewer carriers accept it, fewer routings work, and the UN-specification packaging is a real cost. We quote it as a whole so the figure is the true one.