AirBridgeCargo beats 2015 volumes with two months left in 2016

Business is on such an upswing at AirBridgeCargo Airlines (ABC) that the carrier only needed 10 months in 2016 to top the previous year’s lift. With a 30 percent, year-over-year, growth in tonnage in October, to 57,600- tonnes, ABC entered record-breaking territory for 2016, with two more months still to go, the all-cargo airline announced.

As of Oct. 30, the airline carried 498,000 tonnes across its network, a rise of 29 percent over the same period in 2015, and already 15,000 tonnes over the 483,000 tonnes that the carrier flew in total during 2015.

Robert van de Weg, senior vice president, sales and marketing, at Volga-Dnepr Group, ABC’s parent company, accredited ABC’s ability to “provide responsive solutions – now increasingly for special cargo categories, like pharmaceuticals and off-size cargo,” as a factor in the carrier’s substantial increases in volume.

The carrier added 747-8Fs and routes around the world this year, but news of the increased volume is only half of the story, with the other being long-term profitability on the new routes, which is contingent on load factors.

The carrier recently added a new Houston-Abu Dhabi operation, followed by all-cargo services connecting ABC’s Moscow hub with Chongqing in China; Phnom Penh in Cambodia; Seattle in the United States; Heathrow in the United Kingdom; and, most recently, Oslo in Norway, where the Russian carrier is angling for a piece of the salmon trade.