Building community, mobilising for Venezuela

The Miami Air Cargo Association (MACA) demonstrated its role as a rapid-response industry network by helping coordinate humanitarian airfreight after earthquakes in Venezuela. By connecting local authorities, Global Empowerment Mission and airline partners including Avianca Cargo and LATAM, MACA helped move essential relief supplies such as food, water and pet food into affected areas. MACA’s broader purpose is to reduce friction across the Miami air cargo ecosystem by bringing airlines, forwarders, handlers and airport leadership together. The five-month-old association has already helped resolve operational challenges, while providing industry advocacy, safety initiatives, data sharing and workforce development support. The association’s formation comes as Miami International Airport’s cargo sector enters a period of record growth and increasing workforce pressure. With freight volumes rising sharply and MIA becoming the busiest US airport for total freight in 2025, MACA aims to strengthen collaboration, attract new talent and ensure the region is prepared for future supply chain and disaster-response demands. In the days after the earthquakes, Doral mayor Christi Fraga called Warren Jones, president of the Miami Air Cargo Association (MACA). Her city was collecting goods and supplies for Venezuela and needed help getting them down there. What could he suggest? Five months old at the time, the association did what it was built to do: tap into its connections. “Warren coordinated with the mayor, together with the Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), and then we also reached out to our partner airlines, Avianca, LATAM and others, who also got involved in moving relief cargo,” said Jimmy Nares, a MACA director and cargo development chief at the Miami-Dade Aviation Department. “Our association made a difference in facilitating the movement of relief supplies after the devastation in Venezuela.” The airlift The twin quakes of 24 June struck just west of Caracas and damaged Simón Bolívar International Airport itself. For Global Empowerment Mission, the Doral-based organisation coordinating much of the response, air cargo was the option that made the most sense. “We’re sending a cargo plane every single day. We’ve sent 14 so far,” said Alistair Kiyingi, GEM’s corporate relations manager. “We’re going to be sending more every day for the next two weeks while we convert to containers. The problem with that is the containers take a long time to get down there, so the cargo planes are our biggest partners.” Avianca Cargo moved early and is sustaining momentum. “We sent a lot of humanitarian cargo, not only from Miami,” said CEO Diogo Elias. “We did Miami with GEM, in collaboration with the city of Doral. Food, water and pet food as well. We also had other different freighters from Colombia, directly from Bogotá to Caracas.” The carrier is now resuming passenger services to Valencia, bringing professionals into the disaster area to support the relief effort as well. A room built for exactly this Venezuela was one of the two recent examples Nares offered. In the other, an airline operating at MIA was told it needed a permit for a category of special cargo. It didn’t: the permit sits with the freight forwarder, not the carrier. However, the disagreement was costing the airline real money, and the people who could settle it were not in the same conversation. The carrier went to Jones, who put them in front of the airport’s senior management within days. The meeting itself took minutes. “It was a little bit of a complex issue, but at the end of the day, we were all at the table, and we solved the problem pretty quickly,” Nares said. “Getting everyone together, the forwarders, the airlines, and then the overall airport community,” is how Brian Akers of Delta Cargo describes the value. Akers is on the MACA board of directors as well and spent 20 years as a forwarder at DHL before crossing to the carrier side, which is to say he has been on both sides of exactly that kind of dispute. Formed in January, the association runs on a simple premise: put forwarders, carriers, handlers and the airport in the same room often enough, and the friction drops. Members get quarterly advisory board access, trade data, advocacy in policy discussions and safety programmes run with the TSA and FAA. The model is proven elsewhere. New York has had the JFK Air Cargo Association since 1958; Chicago and Los Angeles run their own. MACA’s announcement drew enough attention that Airports Council International – North America (ACI-NA) devoted a roundtable to the subject last December, inviting all four to compare notes. The industry’s quiet crisis The association also promotes member job openings and internships, and one of the luncheon’s keynote themes explained why. Peter Penseel, president of Delta Cargo, turned to the workforce. “When was there a single senior trying to promote our industry in front of a younger audience?” he asked. “When were you a