Cargo Facts EMEA 2024 features fireside chat with Astral Aviation’s Gadhia
Astral Aviation founder and Chief Executive Sanjeev Gadhia will join Cargo Facts EMEA 2024 for a fireside chat on Tuesday, Feb. 6, at 10 a.m. (GMT +1).
The sixth annual Cargo Facts EMEA event takes place Feb. 5-7 at the Hilton Amsterdam, where industry leaders will gather to share their outlook on the air cargo sector in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Learn more about Cargo Facts EMEA 2024 and register by Dec. 22 to take advantage of the early-bird sale.
Gadhia founded Astral Aviation in 2000 and has served as CEO since its inception.
Astral added a 767-200BDSF on lease from CAM to its fleet and expects to take delivery of a 767-300 freighter in the first quarter of 2024. The Kenya-based operator is considering mixing up its widebody fleet with 777-300ERSFs and A330-300P2Fs.
“The aircraft that I’m so optimistic about is the 777-300ER,” Gadhia told Cargo Facts at the Dubai Airshow 2023 in November. “I think that aircraft will do so well out of Africa, and because the 747 carries a lot of perishables, we believe the payload-to-volume ratio on the 777-300ER would actually be better than the 747-400.”
Astral signed a memorandum of understanding with Nordic Aviation Capital at the Farnborough International Airshow in 2022 to lease two E190Fs and is set to be one of the first operators of the type. The carrier encouraged Embraer to initiate the E190 and E195 conversion program for several years before the agreement was finalized, Gadhia said in 2022.
“We’re putting a lot of bets on the Embraer 190 freighter,” he told Cargo Facts at the Dubai Airshow. “We have plans to become the largest Embraer freighter operator in the world, and we believe that that segment of 12 [tonnes] to 13 tonnes is a segment which will do very, very well for e-commerce, oil and gas, and the postal companies.”
Cargo Facts EMEA 2024 will provide attendees with an overview of the pivotal events that shaped the industry in the past year while analyzing market conditions, trends and new developments underway.
View the full event agenda.
