Air Cargo Germany to fly again?

Reports are surfacing in the European press that an unnamed US investor is trying to resurrect bankrupt all-cargo carrier Air Cargo Germany (ACG). While the sources (links provided below) seem credible, it is hard to imagine a scenario in which ACG will perform much differently than it has in the past, particularly given reports that two of the four 747-400 freighters it operated have been returned to Martinair (from which ACG was sub-leasing them).

Be that as it may, a report in TransportoEuropa says the company handling the bankruptcy has confirmed that discussions between the US investor and ACG executives have taken place. But the outcome is not clear, and a further report from Airliners.de indicates that the talks have broken off as ACG’s existing shareholders (including Moscow-based Volga-Dnepr Group) cannot reach agreement with the potential new investor.

One obvious roadblock to any new investment is that Volga-Dnepr’s stake is 49% – the maximum foreign ownership allowed by EU law. So, any new foreign investment would have to be balanced by a reduction in Volga-Dnepr’s stake – that is, either the new investor would have to buy some of that stake directly, or Volga-Dnepr would have to sell to an EU-based investor.

However, the real question is not how a new investment might be structured, but rather how ACG could operate profitably now when it could not do so in the past. Particularly if its fleet – small to begin with – has been cut by half. The main-deck air freight business has only become tougher over the past few years, and making a go of it with just two 747-400 freighters will not be easy. Of course, it is possible that the mystery investor is a US charter or ACMI operator looking for a European base from which it could use its own aircraft on routes made possible through ACG’s traffic rights, but that is pure speculation.