In the heart of disaster zones where roads crumble and infrastructure collapses, humanitarian supply chains face a race against time to deliver life-saving aid. And unlike commercial logistics, these operations need to navigate unpredictable terrain, political barriers and extreme urgency, often with limited resources and incomplete information.

"You wipe out all this complexity of a 2025 supply chain and you're back to thinking of the basics — how do I get goods from A-to-Z in the easiest, most efficient way possible?" says Jon Corbi, the executive vice-president for private charter company and disaster relief facilitator Air Partner. 

Corbi describes how providing humanitarian aid to a region in need comes with a unique set of challenges that simply don't come up in your average supply chain. That starts with figuring out how goods are physically going to get to where they need to go, especially if they're headed to a remote area that doesn't have the infrastructure needed to land a large cargo plane. In some cases, he says, there isn't even a paved runway, and a smaller aircraft could have to land in a nearby field instead. In other instances, goods can be moved by plane to a smaller airport, but then there need to be partnerships with local trucking companies to get cargo from the airport to its final destination. 

That's without accounting for challenges related to storage too, especially if a shipment contains medicine or other perishables that need to be temperature-controlled at every stage. In a developing country, refrigerated trucks and cold storage facilities are also often in short supply, meaning that a relief organization might have to get creative and transport a shipment with dry ice, or find a local restaurant willing to loan out its freezer.

"You have to be very nimble with your way of thinking," Corbi says. "There are a lot of different tools to get you where you need to go, you just need to have the expertise and the forward-thinking to be able to utilize those tools."

The biggest consideration, he adds, is urgency, where every minute matters, and an organization will have just a couple of days to plan for a charter at most. And, in the most dire circumstances, it could mean they have mere hours to find an aircraft, coordinate with a foreign government to quickly get the proper permits, and then figure out who's going to help unload, transport, store and distribute aid supplies on the back-end.

Planning for Everything

During a nationwide shortage of baby formula in 2022, Air Partner was tagged to transport formula from overseas to a handful of U.S. cities, facilitating 10 international cargo flights over 15 weeks from Australia, New Zealand and Belgium, to New York, Los Angeles, Texas and Ohio. Each flight carried an average of 80-85 tons of baby formula powder on a chartered Boeing 747, all while Air Partner coordinated with suppliers, ground logistics teams, airport staff, and carrier operations teams on either end.

While that represented a relatively more straightforward operation, Corbi says that isn't always the case, noting that "it's all about planning to expect the unexpected."

"You need to have a plan, and then you need to have a Plan B, a Plan C, and maybe a Plan D," he says.

Any number of obstacles could throw a relief mission off course, from a last-second disagreement with a local airport that won't allow a plane to land, to deteriorating conditions brought on by a natural disaster that precipitated the need for aid in the first place. Mitigating those potential roadblocks takes equal parts preparation and an ability to recalibrate on the fly, Corbi explains. Perhaps it's ensuring ahead of time that a plane has enough fuel to reach an alternative landing site, or maybe there are volunteers on the ground with local knowledge that can lend a hand if things go start to go pear-shaped. Air Partner also actively monitors and tracks shipments to guard against loss or theft, only uses trusted and vetted personnel to handle cargo, and if needed, hires additional security depending on the value of the goods and the stability of a given region.

Technology has helped streamline some of the complexity as well, especially with advances in smaller, more affordable GPS trackers, in addition to temperature-controlled containers that can now keep perishables fresh for days. But as Corbi points out, the key still lies in the people themselves. They build the local relationships, make the tough calls under pressure, and have the necessary know-how that only comes from years of navigating challenging environments. It's this mix of planning, flexibility and human insight that ultimately keeps humanitarian aid moving when it matters most.

"Sometimes it's a hurricane, sometimes it's an earthquake, sometimes it's a geopolitical issue," Corbi says. "Each of those challenges represents a different hurdle for logistics to overcome."