AIRBRIDGE CARGO NEW SERVICE
[LOG: Maastricht, April 17] “We are very pleased to announce the start of ABC at our airport,” said Sander Heijmans, CEO of Maastricht Aachen Airport and Maastricht Handling Services today. He continued: “We are thrilled with ABC’s decision to expand it’s program with flights to Maastricht and view this new partnership as a vital part of our strategy of connecting the region to the world’s main trading hubs, such as Moscow, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Adding the fast expanding air cargo markets of Russia and China to our destination list is very positive for the community of freight forwarders at our airport”. Neil Nagarkar, EMEA (Europe, Middle-East & Africa red.) Operations director of ABC, has high expectations for the new services. “In MAA we have found an excellent new partnership, a valuable addition to our current services in Western Europe. Maastricht will not only prove to be a good market for imports from Shanghai but is also able to generate export cargo to Moscow and Asia. It should be noted that we have increased the frequencies in the Netherlands and not taken away from our existing operations at Schiphol, so the connections with the Netherlands has improved for our Dutch customer base. This service will use the new Boeing 747-400ERF and will gives the local market a 3hr transit time to Moscow. We have had a very warm welcome at the airport and are impressed by the handling. We’ve integrated our customer performance standards directly into the service agreement and we are looking forward to our cooperation starting with the first flight” Sander Heijmans added: “The start of the ABC service is another milestone for our cargo division. Once our forwarding community discovers these benefits we expect volumes to increase considerably; and, a second weekly ABC flight is currently being discussed already. To accommodate this foreseen growth in volume we will open a new 20.000 m2 cargo terminal in the fall of next year. This will allow us to grow to over 200.000 annual tonnes and our daughter company Maastricht Handling Services to increase their service levels even further”.
The Russian all-cargo airline, AirBridge Cargo (ABC), and Maastricht Aachen Airport have announced the start of a weekly service connecting MAA with Moscow Sheremetyevo International Airport and Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai airports. The inaugural flight was on April 23 at 13:30 local time.
http://www.maa.nl/