IN BRIEF, THE LATEST CARGO AIRLINE INDUSTRY NEWS.
Liege Airport invests a further 20 million euros
The cargo business continues to boom at Liege Airport, thus convincing the shareholders and management to
invest a further 20 million euros in new warehouses and handling facilities. Liege has benefited from the present misery at Amsterdam Schiphol caused by the reduction in freighter slots for
airlines serving SPL. However, it’s not just the Amsterdam issue that is responsible for the Liege advancement. New carriers have been joining up at LGG on regular intervals, one being Air China
Cargo which started operations there in June of this year.
It is planned that in 2018 Liege Airport will gain a further 20,000 sq. m. of warehouse space to accommodate new arrivals. This will increase present handling capacity by 30% and it is expected
that the first 6,000 sq. m. will be ready by January 2018. “#Freightersfirst” - that’s Liege’s slogan and strategy going forward.
Liege Airport CEO, Luc Patrone states that: “First the global cargo business is undergoing general growth driven by good economic performance in Europe, but also by the emergence of new niches
driven by e-commerce.”
Volga-Dnepr gets Cargo Charter Airline of the Year award
BACA - the Air Charter Association has given their 2017 BACA Excellence Award as Cargo Charter Airline to Russia’s Volga-Dnepr Airlines at a ceremony held in London’s famous Guildhall which was
attended by hundreds of aviation and air charter executives. BACA which was founded in 1949 by members of the Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Exchange also presents an annual award for what they
see as being the best Passenger Charter Airline and Handling Agent.
Volga-Dnepr has received this prestigious award for the seventh time and it follows on their recent Charter Operator of the Year award given them in October at the Payload Asia Awards held in
Singapore.
Fraport shows a strong first nine months
The Fraport Group which apart from being owners of Frankfurt Airport, also has holdings in various other airports across the globe, has published their results for the first nine months of this
year. Group revenues reached a total of €2.23 billion which is an increase of almost 14% compared to last year. EBITDA rose by 19.4% to €807.7 million.
Cargo volumes at Frankfurt Airport rose by 5.1% to reach 1.63 million metric tons. FRA passenger traffic continues to increase with results for January to September showing 48.9 million
passengers passing though the airport. This is an increase of 4.6% on last year. Revenues in the group’s aviation segment went up by 4% to €721 million and the Retail & Real Estate sector
showed a 6.3% increase to €394.2 million. Ground handling revenues remained rather stagnant, showing only a nominal 0.9% growth.
UPS Q3 results below those of Q2
The extreme bad weather conditions in the USA during the late summer months has impacted quite heavily on UPS domestic U.S. operations and results. This factor is mainly responsible for the
carrier’s Q3 results ending up a little below those of Q2. However, the UPS international package sector saw daily volumes during Q3 rising y-o-y by 11.3% which gave the carrier an 8.9% increase
in operating income for this product segment. Q3 overall net income went down by 0.5% in Q3 to US$1.26 billion despite showing revenues of US$15.98 billion which were 7.0% higher than the
corresponding period in 2016.
CargoLogicAir adds Tel Aviv
Stansted, UK-based CargoLogicAir (CLA) which operates a fleet of three B747 freighters and which started operations in January 2016, has added Israel’s capital city Tel Aviv to its regular
schedule. This follows on the heels of the recently added services from stagnated to Mexico, Atlanta and Houston.
The weekly B747-400F service starts on November 10. and operates also via Frankfurt on Friday evenings before continuing to Tel Aviv and returning to Frankfurt on Saturday morning. As of December
the outbound service will operate from Hahn Airport instead of Frankfurt-Main.
Alibaba looking forward to record volumes
The 11th of November is expected to be a special day for the Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba. The so called Singles Day event which is seen as being the largest one-day retail event in the
world, will take place in China. Reports state that over 100 million customers are expected to take part in the event in which Alibaba on that day will offer over 140,000 different brands through
offline and online shopping platforms to their customers. More than 600,000 Chinese stores will also be part of this Single Day event. Alibaba’s logistics set-up, Cainiao, is investing around
US$200 million in the event in order to give a seamless service to their other logistics partners and merchants. They will have more than 3 million personnel in action to handle the expected
flood of business.
Cargojet gets Canada Post contract extension
Canadian carrier Cargojet Airways got a welcome business boost when Canada Post and Purolator agreed to an early contract extension to the existing agreement between them and the airline which
was signed in 2014. The early extension of the contract now ensures that Cargojet Airways will have the Purolator / Canada Post business until at least 2025. Cargojet provides air cargo
services throughout Canada for the Canada Post Group of Companies (CPGOC) which includes the running of Purolator’s national air cargo network throughout the country.
John Mc Donagh
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