SHORT SHOTS

Chinese cargo airlines go for B757PCF conversions
Two of China’s most active cargo and postal carriers, China Postal Airlines and AVIC Cargo Airlines have opted to enlarge their cargo fleets with Boeing 757-200 PCF aircraft.
These are converted passenger variants.
Both carriers have ordered a total of eight aircraft from Precision Aircraft Solutions.
China Postal has six on order and the remaining two are for AVIC.
The China Postal Airlines aircraft were sourced from their co-parent, China Southern Airlines and it is believed that the AVIC planes are coming from Xiamen Airlines.
China Postal already operates four B757-200Fs along with a total of twenty-two B737Fs in various configurations.
AVIC Cargo Airlines, which is a joint-venture between Joy Air and Xi’an Xianyang, is presently undergoing certification with the Chinese Civil Aviation Authority.

KF Cargo brings DC-10 freighter fleet back into service
Canada’s KF Cargo, based in Kelowna, which fell on troubled times at the end of last year is now bringing their DC-10 freighter aircraft back into service.
The carrier has signed an air charter agreement to carry freight between Miami and South America.
KF Cargo brought both their DC-10Fs back into service in mid-April and is said to be operating the contract to Bogota, Caracas and Lima from Miami International.
The airline closed their Toronto hub at the end of March and had laid off staff.

LH Cargo deepens ties with RocketSpace
The Frankfurt-based cargo airline works hand-in-hand with disruptive startups for push-ing forward digital innovation. “We see great potential for increased digitisation and ser-vices in the entire air cargo supply chain. We are keen to explore new ways together with young, highly-qualified experts from the start-up scene,” commented Monika Wiederhold, Vice President Product Management & Innovation at Lufthansa Cargo. On this occasion the airline is partnering with Silicon Valley-based Rocket Space in the context of the new “Logistic Tech Accelerator” program. As a part of the program, Lufthansa Cargo is going to educate startups on the business objectives of the industry, will closely co-operate with selected companies and incubate ideas for a pilot program, resulting in a go-to-market solution. In addition to startups, the Logistics Tech Accelerator will use the unique model of drawing from the diverse expertise of multiple corporate participants, alongside Lufthansa Cargo, including founding corporate member Kaleido.
RocketSpace has already been working with Lufthansa’s Berlin based Innovation Hub. “We are proud of extending the cooperation to the logistics sector now,” Wiederhold says.

Norwegian cargo appoints dnata handling in the UK
Starting yesterday (1 May) dnata UK has taken over full cargo handling for Norwegian Cargo at all of the UK airports served by Norwegian.
These are London-Gatwick, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh.
On top of this, dnata will also take on the responsibility for Norwegian’s regional and trucking needs throughout the UK.
The Norwegian low cost carrier has recently upped its short-haul services from Gatwick, Edinburgh and Manchester by adding five new routes alongside the recently started long-haul services from Gatwick to San Francisco (Oakland) and Boston.
Long-haul destinations are served with the carrier’s new fleet of Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners of which 31 are on order.

Bulgaria’s Bright Flight gets ATR freighter
The Sofia-based regional freighter carrier, Bright Flight operates with two Antonov AN-26 freighter aircraft and has now just taken delivery of an ATR 42-300F to boost services from Sofia. The Bulgarian carrier, which offers charter services from Sofia, put the new aircraft into service with its first flight to Goma.

AMI’s ‘Quote & Book’ reaches 100,000 quotes
The UK division of AMI launched what it termed as being a new online booking portal towards the end of 2015.
The company now states that this ‘Quote & Book’ portal has now reached over 100,000 quotes during the first six months of operation.
They further claim that due to this their live customer base has also doubled since then and maintains that they have reached a 15% conversion ratio from quotes to firm bookings since the system came into operation.
Quote & Book has been modeled by AMI on their Express click2ship, which was launched back in 2010. It is only available to AMI’s pre-approved and bona-fide customer base.
The company states that it is simple to use and works by agents entering a minimum of shipment details and then the site generates immediate quotes for both direct AWB services and consolidations from a series of airlines.

CSP regains RA status
German regulator Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA) conceded ground handling agent CSP Cargo Service Point GmbH full rights to act as regulated agent again. This was announced during the past days by Andreas Schlimgen, CSP’s Managing Director. The Troisdorf near Cologne based company had lost this status together with two other local service providers some weeks ago after an international team of inspectors had monitored all processes, checked the documentation and the staff training levels (CargoForwarder Global reported). After ending their audit, the security experts filed several complaints, which led to the revoking of the RA status. By regaining the license, CSP’s times of dire straits seem to be over.

John Mc Donagh  /  Heiner Siegmund