The agreement followed assistance from fellow EGSAC member Air Proxy, based in the Baltic States, which introduced MAC Holdings to its national carrier.
airBaltic is the main Baltic carrier, serving over 60 destinations in Scandinavia, Russia and CIS countries, and Western Europe. It offers nonstop flights from three Baltic capital cities ' Riga, Vilnius, and Tallinn. MAC Holdings is using interline agreements with Kuwait Airways and Jet Airways to connect to the airline's Riga (Latvia) hub.
MAC will initially focus on airBaltic's eastern European and Scandinavian destinations, due to the lower yield on western European traffic. MAC Holdings' Manager, Airline GSSA Division, Sunanda Perera said, 'Our research identified a vacancy for a quality carrier serving this region. Our representation of airBaltic therefore opens up a new export market, with great potential once we have demonstrated the viability of the routing to customers.'
In the early stages, MAC will concentrate on general cargo to ensure that connections and transfer handling function correctly throughout. Later, MAC will devote more attention to Sri Lanka's important perishables exports (such as tuna fish, fruit & vegetables and foliage plants), once the necessary additional resources and monitoring have been put in place.
The airBaltic fleet consists of 31 aircraft ' ten Boeing 737-500, eight Boeing 737-300, two Boeing 757-200, and eleven Fokker 50 airplanes. airBaltic recently received the Airline of the Year 2009/2010 (Gold Award) from the European Regions Airline Association. airBaltic is also the winner of the Air Transport World Phoenix Award 2010 ' a global recognition of excellence in restructuring business.
MAC Holdings is the exclusive member of the EGSAC GSSA network in Sri Lanka and the Republic of Maldives. In addition to airBaltic, MAC Holdings also represents Shenzhen Airlines (passenger and cargo), Continental Airlines Cargo, bmi and Thai Cargo. EGSAC is the world's largest cargo GSSA network, with 130+ stations in 30+ countries.
