SpiceJet and Brussels Airport team up on vaccine shipments

SpiceJet has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Belgium’s Brussels Airport for the transportation of Covid-19 vaccines, while it has also carried India’s first shipments.

The partners will work towards developing a direct airlink between Brussels and India, with the European airport becoming SpiceJet’s “first flight point in Europe”.

Brussels Airport will provide assistance to SpiceJet with regards to slots and networking contracts.

They will also jointly work with the government, pharma companies and forwarders to ensure a “reliable ecosystem for vaccine delivery in a temperature-controlled environment”.

“The airline’s cargo arm, SpiceXpress, envisions to provide rapid and secure transportation of Covid-19 vaccine from and to Europe and beyond with proper temperature-controlled mechanism under the MoU,” SpiceJet said.

SpiceJet chairman and managing director Ajay Singh said: “We are delighted to partner with Brussels Airport in our fight against the pandemic.

“This tie-up will help SpiceJet to seamlessly transport vaccines not only from Europe and beyond to India but also help Indian manufacturers export extremely sensitive drugs in a safe and controlled environment.”

Brussels Airport Company chief executive Arnaud Feist added: “We are very pleased to be partnering with SpiceJet and to be able to offer our expertise for the future distribution of vaccines from India within Europe and beyond.”

SpiceJet has also partnered with GMR Hyderabad Air Cargo, Om Logistics Ltd, Snowman Logistics among others as part of its Covid vaccine efforts. 

Meanwhile, SpiceJet today carried the country’s first consignment of Covid-19 vaccine, from Pune to Delhi. This was followed by multiple flights to different cities as SpiceJet transported close to 4m Covishield vaccine doses weighing around 11 tonnes on the very first day of the shipment.

The first consignment of Covishield consisting of 2,64,000 doses was transported from Pune to Delhi on SpiceJet flight SG 8937. The flight took-off from the Pune International Airport at 8:05 and landed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi at 10:15.

SpiceJet transported multiple vaccine consignments from Pune to different Indian cities including 276,000 doses to Guwahati, 996,000 doses to Kolkata, 3,72,000 doses to Hyderabad, 480,000 doses to Bhubaneswar, 648,000 doses to Bengaluru, 552,000 doses to Patna and 408,000 doses to Vijayawada on Tuesday.