
IN BRIEF - THE LATEST AIR CARGO INDUSTRY NEWS

BRUcargo completes new cargo buildings
Brussels-based BRUcargo has announced that by the end of this year they will have handed over various new cargo handling facilities to their users.
Worldwide Flight Services (WFS), already moved into Building 832 in January of this year and Brinks moved into the VTAC (Valuables Transport and Accommodation Center) in June, a building which
was developed and is owned by Brussels Airport Company.
In the next months BRUcargo West facilities 833, 834, and 835 which are also developed and owned by Brussels Airport Company, will be handed over to Kuehne & Nagel, Expeditors and WFS. Other
facilities still in the planning stages are Building 747, which will be operated by Ziegler and the new animal center.
The airport has also announced that Longer and Heavier Vehicles (LHVs) with a maximum length of 25 meters and a designated weight of 60 tons, can now also be loaded and offloaded at
BRUcargo.

LATAM Cargo ups intra-American freighter flights
The Colombian subsidiary of the carrier, LATAM Cargo Colombia, adds 12 weekly freighter frequencies on routes connecting Bogota and Miami. Conversely, it will increase its southbound all-cargo
operations between Miami and Bogota to eight flights per week. The operational step is slated to take place gradually between September and December. It was enabled by the addition of two Boeing
767-300BCFs to the fleet, bringing the Group’s fleet to 11 freighters altogether.
Simultaneously, LATAM Cargo announces to up their operations into Peru significantly. As of next month, two weekly freighter services linking Miami with Lima will be operated. In December, LATAM
Airlines Peru will upgrade its passenger service from Madrid to Lima from Boeing 767 to Boeing 787-9 aircraft, this way tripling the cargo capacity.
“The new services to Bogota and Lima, and the expansion out of Colombia, will enable us to consolidate our network as the most comprehensive into South America. Combined with LATAM Group's
passenger network we plan to continue to provide our customers with more and better options to, from and within Latin America,” said Andres Bianchi, LATAM Cargo’s CEO.

Turkish Cargo goes for fully automatic terminal
Turkish Cargo, the Turkish Airlines air freight arm, has announced that a new fully automated cargo terminal will be developed and supplied to them by Germany-based Lodige Industries.
Once completed, the new facility will have a handling capacity of 2 million tons per annum and be spread over an area of 300,000 square meters. There will be a total of 17,000 storage bins, 30
large stacking cranes and an integrated warehouse management system divided over 15 lifters, which will have a direct interface to the customers and TK’s freight management system. Maintenance on
site will be carried out by Lodige Industries own service personnel who will have a direct interface with the company’s customer care center in Germany.

Flight simulator gets a ride to Japan
The transport of a highly sensitive Flight Simulator weighing 35 tons was recently carried out by UK-based Air Charter Service (ACS) daughter company, ACS Americas.
It is assumed that the simulator was for a large military aircraft fleet in use with the Japanese Air Force. The flight from Texas to Japan took a total of 16 hours which included a technical
stop in Anchorage. The delivery date of the simulator was originally planned for September, but the Japanese military needed it faster. The 35-ton piece of equipment was not easy to load as the
dimensions were almost the same as the width of the B747 freighter main deck cabin. Neither ACS nor the Japanese military have disclosed which carrier was used for the transport.

Tigers opens dedicated e-commerce centre in South Africa
Hong Kong-based Tigers daughter company, Tigers South Africa, has invested in an IT infrastructure for their new e-commerce centre for the South African market.
The new dedicated e-commerce facility has now officially been opened in Johannesburg and Tigers state that the warehouse is fully equipped to cater for the handling of e-commerce shipments in the
future. The facility has been equipped with Tigers own ScanPak App which lets staff conduct scan checks while packaging shipments, as well as creating waybills for shipments.
Tigers CEO, Andrew Jillings, says that “the new dedicated e-commerce centre in South Africa is an important investment for the future direction of Tigers and is a testament to the hard work of
the team in South Africa.”
Virgin Cargo and Delta Cargo expand UK-USA network
Both carriers have been offering joint cargo services between the United Kingdom and the USA for some time. They have now expanded the service with Virgin Atlantic offering
increased flights from both London Heathrow and Gatwick airports. Delta has restarted services from Manchester as well as planning to start a Gatwick to Boston service as of May 2020.
Also, in early 2020 both carriers will increase their capacity between London Heathrow and New York-JFK, with Delta offering three daily frequencies and Virgin, five daily. Both carriers claim
that the joint cooperation is working well and that the new schedules will offer clients in the USA and the United Kingdom more capacity and a faster service.
FLEET NEWS
Greensboro, North Carolina, USA-based 21 Air which operates with a fleet of two Boeing 767-200 freighters is said to be in the process of adding a further B767F to its fleet.
This aircraft will be -300 series model which is planned to be put into service before the end of this year on wet-lease and charter contracts with other companies. The two B767-200Fs are
presently undergoing maintenance and have been deployed since early 2017 on routes to South America and on U.S. domestic services.
China’s Suparna Airlines, once known as Yangtze River Airlines is to start a twice weekly Oslo to Nanjing service as of September this year, utilizing a Boeing 747-400 freighter.
The carrier will participate in the lucrative transport of fresh Norwegian seafood to the Far East. Suparna Airlines is part of the Chinese HNA Group.
John Mc Donagh
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