SHORT SHOTS

China Air Cargo almost airborne
It has been reported for some time that a new Chinese all-cargo-carrier startup was in the making. Now it seems that China Air Cargo Co. Ltd will soon take to the skies. Their first freighter, a B757-200PCF which was converted by Precision Aircraft Solutions at the HAECO facility in Xiamen, has been delivered to the new company. The delivery ties in nicely with China Air Cargo having recently received their operating certificate (AOC) from the Chinese authorities. It is expected that China Air Cargo will be operating on behalf of one of China’s large express companies. A second B757F is presently being reconfigured by Precision and is expected to be in operation very soon.

Atlas Air Holding shows 2nd quarter jump in profits
US-based Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings which is the mother company of Atlas Air, Polar Air Cargo, Southern Air and Titan Aviation, has announced a 2017 second-quarter net profit of US$38.9 million which is said to be an almost 89% increase in net income over the same period in 2016. The 2016 Q2 net result was listed at US$20.6 million only. The carrier also reported an almost 17% rise in Q2 revenues to US$517.4 million. Much of this is apparently attributed to expansion of operations in Asia and an increase in Atlas wet-lease flying for Amazon Prime. On top of this, two new lease customers, Yangtze River Airlines and Cathay Pacific were added. In early August Atlas Air announced that it will wet-lease three of their B747-400Fs to Hong Kong Air, with flights tabled to start in September.

Swissport Ghana gets Best Terminal Operator award
At the 2017 National Trade Facilitation Awards (NFTA) ceremony which was held recently in Accra, Ghana, Swissport Ghana received the award as the “Best Terminal operator.” The Switzerland-based ground handler was chosen for their performance and achievements in 2016 which focused on compliance, revenue generation, time to completion of document processing and actual release of documents as well as transaction volumes. Christian Zweifel, CEO Swissport Ghana, commented when receiving the award that “Swissport Ghana is very proud of this achievement in this competitive category.”

Dominic Kennedy to head Virgin Atlantic Cargo
UK-based Virgin Atlantic Cargo has promoted Dominic Kennedy to the position of Managing Director of Cargo. This is a new decision seeing that recently the carrier announced that David Geer would take up this position as successor to John Lloyd who steps down after 30 years of service with Virgin. Geer will now move into the Senior Vice President Revenue Management & Digital Distribution position at Virgin.
Dominic Kennedy who joined the carrier in 2005 has been with Virgin Atlantic Cargo since 2008 where he has held various leadership positions and is currently Director, Commercial Planning. He takes up the head of cargo position as of August 14.

American Airlines Cargo gets new MD Global & Key Accounts
Lisa Oxentine will take over from Roger Samways as Managing Director, Global & Key Accounts at American Airlines Cargo. Samways had earlier been promoted to VP of the Cargo Sales division. Oxentine has been with AA since 1987, where she started as a customer services agent and until now has led the Customer Recovery Team in the American Customer Experience department.

Budapest Airport backs two freight summits
Hungary’s Budapest Airport is currently investing €160 million in transforming their air cargo facilities as part of the airport’s BUD 2020 Development Programme. It has also decided to sponsor two conferences at the airport. These are the Cool Chain Association Pharma and BioSciences Conference, as well as the Air Cargo Handling Conference, both of which are being held in Budapest from 18-19 September and 19-21 September respectively.
Rene Droese, Property and Cargo Director, Budapest Airport, commented: “working with these two important summits is a natural partnership as we continue to support several companies boosting their business in the region.” Mr Droese will also be part of the panel discussion on “Creating the Ideal Cargo Hub” at the Cargo Handling Conference. The two conferences will be held in the Corinthia Hotel and will be co-located with the Unit Loading Device (ULD) Care Conference at the same location.

IAG Cargo publishes Q2 results
Commercial revenues at IAG Cargo during the second quarter of this year amounted to €260 million. This, the carrier states, is an increase of 7.6% at constant exchange over the same period in 2016. Yields increased however by just 1.1% whereas volumes were up by 6.4%. IAG Cargo offered almost 6% more capacity to the market during the Q2 period. Lynne Embleton, CEO at IAG Cargo commented on the results as follows: “The airfreight market continues to be very competitive. Our overall performance has been robust and the market has gradually improved through the first half of 2017.” She further stated that demand from the Asia Pacific region had been strong during Q2 with an increase in volumes of almost 9%.

FREIGHTER MOVEMENTS
Swedish based West Atlantic Airlines received another B737-400 freighter which is a recently converted British Airways passenger aircraft. The configuration was done by Aeronautical Engineers and the aircraft which is on lease from Automatic LLC will be operated by Atlantic Airlines, a UK subsidiary of West Atlantic.
FedEx has taken yet another B767-300F directly from Boeing. This brings the total B767-300Fs operated by FedEx to forty-nine with still a further 63 being on order with Boeing.
Kalitta Air, the U.S.-based all cargo carrier has received an ex-Korean Air B747-400F from Boeing Capital.
DHL Express received an ex-Azur Air passenger-to-cargo (PCF) converted B757-200 freighter. The aircraft was converted to a freighter by Precision Aircraft Solutions.

John Mc Donagh