Tag: UAE

DHL added another airline to its line-up this spring with the acquisition of a stake in Astar Air Cargo, but the other mega-forwarders have no interest in owning cargo aircraft, despite a penchant for dedicated freighter-cargo flights.

DHL’s appetite for cargo airlines suffered a setback in July when ABX Air, the erstwhile freighter division of Airborne Express spun off after the integrator’s acquisition by DHL, rebuffed a takeover offer from Astar Air Cargo, the former DHL Airways. A marriage between the two would have combined the two US cargo carriers that make most of their business moving traffic for DHL. The integrator had acquired a 49 percent stake in Astar in early June along with a 24.9 percent voting interest, the maximum position in US airlines allowed to non-US entities.

DHL’s express business in the US has suffered in the wake of the integration of its air network into a single hub and is not expected to produce black figures before 2009. Nevertheless, the buy into Astar did not surprise industry observers.

The Astar buy-in followed DHL’s acquisition of a 49 percent stake in Polar Air Cargo last year, which included a 20-year block space agreement giving the integrator guaranteed lift on Polar’s transpacific flights. For intra-Asia traffic, DHL has permanent lift through its stake in Air Hong Kong and the carrier’s A300F operations in the region.

These deals are fuelled by the logistics giant’s express business, but they also drop fixed capacity into the lap of DHL Global Forwarding.

The other global mega-forwarders like Schenker, Kuehne + Nagel or Panalpina, have ruled out the possibility of owning freighter aircraft, notwithstanding a need for dedicated cargo flights.