The Hindu Business Line : British Air to beef up freighter network

THE fourth freighter, to be launched by British Airways World Cargo (BAWC) in September, is to strengthen its network to and from India, among other countries, according to BAWC sources.

The fourth freighter, to be used to operate the airline's first direct freighter services to Shanghai, will have the route rotation like this: the one flight will have the rotation Stanstead-Shanghai-Delhi-Stanstead and the other flight Stanstead-Dammam-Dubai-Shanghai-Mumbai-Stanstead. This means the proposed service will enable sector selling between Shanghai and Delhi and subsequently between Delhi and Stanstead on one of the two new Shanghai services of the airline and between Shanghai and Mumbai and subsequently between Mumbai and Stanstead on the other Shanghai services.

Right now BAWC operates seven freighters into and out of India every week - four Delhi, two Mumbai and one Chennai.

BAWC, which will operate a B747-200F aircraft to complement its existing B747-400F freighter fleet, will be the first UK airline to add freighter capacity into China following the announcement of the Air Services Agreement reached in February this year between the UK Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

The introduction of the fourth freighter, according to BAWC sources, will create additional capacity helping the airline add, also for the first time, Chicago, one of the world's largest freighter hubs, and Kuwait to the carrier's freighter schedule with additional freighter connections to destinations such as Johannesburg, Frankfurt, Dubai and Dammam.