AeroLogic has promising first month
Euro-Asia freight carrier AeroLogic said it has already seen promising load factors on its planes in its first month of operations, reports Channel News Asia.
Europe-Asia freight carrier AeroLogic said it has already seen promising load factors on its planes in its first month of operations, reports Channel News Asia
AeroLogic, a joint venture between DHL Express and Lufthansa Cargo, commenced services on 30 June.
The article continues:
For now, it operates two routes between Europe and Asia. It makes four weekly flights from Leipzig in Germany to Bahrain, Singapore, New Delhi and back to Leipzig. And on weekends, it flies from Leipzig to Hong Kong and Tashkent in Uzbekistan.
AeroLogic’s director of network management, Matthias Kaup, said the airline had considered delaying the start of its service until the aviation industry makes a recovery.
But AeroLogic was contractually tied to take delivery of four brand new aircrafts this year, and so it had to push ahead with the launch.
Despite the ongoing downturn however, Kaup said business has been promising so far.
He said: “We are quite happy that the volumes are not so bad. What we experience as a new operator is that our customers make it possible to fill the aircraft with quite a nice and promising load factor. So we hope that in the second half of this year, the market will turn again.”
Changi Airport Group said it is also seeing a bottoming out in the downturn.
Airfreight movement at Changi Airport declined 20% in the first six months of the year as compared to the same period last year. But in the past couple of months, it declined by smaller amounts of 16-17%.
AeroLogic said it expects the trade lane between Europe and Asia to grow by five per cent annually in the mid-term, and thus it plans to expand its network to offer direct connections to most of Asia’s major metropolitan areas by 2010.
AeroLogic is the third of five new carriers to start operations at Changi Airport this year.
Changi said the new service increases the total freight capacity on the Singapore-Leipzig route by 6% to a total of 946 tonnes a week.
