AeroSur commenced weekly operations between Madrid and Santa Cruz de la Sierra on June 8th, filling the gap left by the termination of LAB scheduled services from Europe.
Initially using a leased Air Plus Comet B747-200, AeroSur is poised to take delivery of its own B747 and will then double services to twice weekly (Thursday and Saturday), departing at 11:30 and arriving at 17:30. Typical cargo capacity is 12 tons per flight.
From Santa Cruz, the airline offers scheduled B727 connections to Cobija, Cochabamba, La Paz, Puerto Suarez, Sucre and Tarija in Bolivia. It also serves Sao Paulo, Brazil (10 flights per week) and Buenos Aires (5 flights per week). As capacity on these regional flights is limited to around 1500kgs and 150 kgs per piece, the AeroSur network is supplemented by express road feeders.
Support for the new services from Madrid has been immediate, reports CRS MD Toni Beato: 'With the early flights we are carrying cargo only out of Spain, and loads are already building very well. We are now putting a full sales network in place to cover Europe, Scandinavia, Israel and other markets.
'Our fellow EGSAC members will cover most of these markets, and they will feed the Madrid departures by a mixture of trucking and interline agreements with their other airline principals. With traffic from this wide area we should have no difficulty in filling all the available capacity.'
AeroSur is already planning further expansion, with the imminent introduction of flights into Lima (Peru), Santiago (Chile) and Quito (Venezuela). Concludes Beato: 'We are optimistic that AeroSur will eventually become a significant carrier for Central and South America, and provide a welcome alternative for many of the markets in the region.'
CRS has a network of 8 offices throughout Spain, and is a founder member of the EGSAC consortium - which now has 28 members in Europe, India, Israel, Pakistan, South Africa and Sri Lanka.
