Air Freight Services

Air freight is a speed-over-cost choice. It's the right call when a consignment has to move within 24 hours across a long distance — machine parts grounding a production line, pharmaceutical urgency, legal documents, medical samples, a replacement component for a mining or construction site. For planned freight where an extra day of transit is acceptable, road or rail will be materially cheaper.

The overnight interstate network between Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Darwin and Hobart — plus same-day priority uplift on the busier triangular lanes (Melbourne-Sydney, Sydney-Brisbane, Melbourne-Brisbane). Pickup from sender to origin airport, airline uplift, and metro delivery at destination are booked as a single consignment so the sender isn't chasing separate legs.

Airline belly cargo has strict limits — typical upper bounds are around 150 cm height per piece on narrow-body aircraft, ULD pallet footprints on wide-body, and airline-specific weight caps per piece (often 500 kg for single items, much less on some services). Dangerous goods, lithium batteries and aerosols carry further restrictions. Share dimensions, gross weight and commodity at quote stage and QFM will confirm whether the lane accepts the piece as booked.

Same-day uplift moves on the next available scheduled flight after pickup — the consignment has to make the airport cut-off, typically 60-90 minutes before departure, and destination metro delivery runs as soon as the flight lands. Overnight air is booked for next-business-day availability with more relaxed cut-offs. Same-day pricing is higher because it often uses passenger belly space on short notice.

Same-day air freight requires pickup and airport handover by mid-morning on most east-coast lanes (actual cut-off varies by airline and lane). Melbourne-Sydney and Sydney-Brisbane are generally the easiest to make same-day; Perth and Darwin are next-day at best from the east coast. Contact QFM early in the day for same-day requests — share the pickup suburb and we'll confirm the latest bookable cut-off.