Etihad Crystal Cargo, the cargo division of Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, is reporting a record month for March 2006.
With more than 10,000 shipments and more than US$15million sales last month, Etihad Crystal Cargo continues its steep growth path of recent months.
Key contributors to the record performance are the number of new routes added to Etihad Airways' network ' Islamabad, Jakarta, Lahore, Peshawar, Manchester, Manila, Muscat ' and the five brand-new aircraft that recently joined Etihad Airways' fleet ' three brand-new Boeing 777-300 ER and two Airbus A330-200.
Etihad Crystal Cargo and its network of General Sales and Services Agents (GSSAs) have been able to generate high load factors on all of the new services of Etihad Airways, with the new Pakistan routes and some of the Far East routes showing outstanding performances.
In February 2006, Etihad Airways started flights to Peshawar (twice a week), to Islamabad (five times a week) and Lahore (twice a week). The new services are operated with A330, A340 and B767 aircraft offering a cargo capacity between 12-15 tons with a full passenger load.
'The load factors in the first two months of the new Pakistan services beat all expectations. With our team in Pakistan, Royal Pak Cargo Services, we were able to triple our uplift from Pakistan since February,' says Ingo Roessler, Vice-President Etihad Airways.
Royal Pak Cargo Services has been Etihad Crystal Cargo's GSSA since it first commenced services to Karachi one year ago.
Also successful are Etihad Airways' new routes to the Far East, Jakarta and Manila.
Launched on March 16, 2006, Abu Dhabi ' Jakarta is served four times a week with one of the airline's new Airbus A330-200 aircraft, offering a cargo capacity of 15 tons per flight with a full passenger load.
The Abu Dhabi ' Manila service started on February 16, 2006, operated four times a week with a combination of an Airbus A330-200ER and the new Boeing 777-300ER.
Etihad Crystal Cargo has appointed P.T. Unique Kargonize to start up cargo operations for Etihad Airways in the territory of Indonesia and Transnational Diversified Group (TDG) for the Philippines.
'The yield we have been able to create on the routes Abu Dhabi ' Jakarta and Abu Dhabi ' Manila is clearly remarkable and promising. It also shows the success of our outsourcing strategy to entrust our sales and services to GSSAs,' concluded Roessler.
Charter services remain an integral part of Etihad Crystal Cargo's overall performance with March 2006 showing the highest charter activities so far in this year.
The performance of the first quarter of the year underlines that Etihad Crystal Cargo is set to meet its ambitious target for 2006 of doubling its revenue and total tonnage to world-wide US$200million in cargo sales.
