Cargoitalia’s charter comeback

FOLLOWING a review of its sales and customer functions in September Cargoitalia has established a new division to cater for its growing ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance) and charter business.

A long-term contract with Lufthansa Cargo to operate twice-weekly from Frankfurt (Germany) to New York and Chicago (both US) has boosted Cargoitalia’s charter and ACMI work.

With the additional operation of ad hoc charters on an average weekly basis, its new programme ‘Ondemand’ now accounts for around 30 per cent of Cargoitalia’s total flying.

“We are receiving a steady flow of charter enquiries and movements,” charter and ACMI manager Giacomo Sciuto said. “The [MD-11F] is winning jobs for which the 747 is too large and too expensive, and the A300s/767s are too small. Much of our work is in Africa, which is a traditionally strong market for the MD-11F with its high temperature and high-altitude operating capabilities.”

The carrier renewed its contract for Africa West, which was initiated in June. This now involves a doubling of the previous weekly flights from Liege (Brussels) to destinations throughout west Africa.

“Ondemand is absorbing our spare capacity, which means we are now able to maintain our scheduled services until the market conditions are right to re-start our expansion programme,” managing director Giacomo Manzon commented.

“We are re-modelling Cargoitalia as a more flexible operation that can cater for every type of freighter requirement, from scheduled service through long-term ACMI contracts to one-off charter flights.”