AirBridgeCargo Airlines (ABC), part of Volga-Dnepr Group, started its 10th anniversary year with cargo up 16 percent in the first half of 2014.
ABC transported 188,354 tonnes of cargo during the time period.
The growth reflects airline’s market positioning on the routes linking cargo destinations in Asia, Europe and North America. Freight tonne kilometers during the first half of the year rose by 19 percent.
ABC continued to out-perform the market in terms of its average load factors in the first half of 2014, reporting a network-wide average of 72 percent.
ABC continued to extend its international network. In the U.S., it added a second new route to Dallas/Fort Worth and also increased frequencies to Chicago. In Europe, ABC launched flights to Leipzig, Munich and Malmo, Sweden, and opened a direct service from Frankfurt to Chicago.
ABC’s delivered-as-promised index stayed above 80 percent.
The airline’s focus on developing its home market and attracting more import traffic into Russia resulted in a 13 percent year-to-date growth in tonnage on its routes to Russia in the first six months of 2014. The highest growth was generated on routes from Asia and North America with 29 percent and 23 percent growth, respectively.
The total volume of imports carried by ABC into Russia increased to 42,676 tonnes during the half-year.
“The challenges which the global air cargo market continues to face have not held back ABC’s development,” Denis Ilin, executive president of ABC, said. “We have achieved our goals for the first half of the year and lay down ambitious plans for the second half of 2014, which will include launching of more new routes and increasing our frequencies on a number of existing routes, as well as growing our fleet. We will surely keep focus on our home market, not only by developing additional import business to Russia but also by launching domestic routes using the Boeing 737 freighter fleet of Atran Airlines, another part of Volga-Dnepr Group. We are on track for good 2014 and projecting our total tonnage for the year to exceed 400,000 tonnes of cargo.”
Meanwhile, Volga-Dnepr said air charter sales of IL-76TD-90VD flights carrying oil and gas equipment doubled in the first half of 2014 to 32 percent of all flights operated by the aircraft, compared to the same time last year. Volga-Dnepr Airlines has a fleet of five IL-76TD-90VD aircraft.