overview
Cargo is king in theminds of the leading Chinese airlines. Sam Chambers in Dalian unravels the wideranging consolidation seen in the sector over the past year
have the numbers of newplanes and airlines active in China. Now, though,with the advent of high-speed rail – in fact 42 of the fastest trains ever seenwill straddle the country in the coming three years – the airlines arewary of passenger growth and are focusingmore than ever on the cargo side of their business. The state air behemoths that have traditionally ruled the
I 2
roost – China Southern, Air China and China Eastern – have come undermore andmore pressure,whilemany of the start-ups barelymade it off the runway. Come themiddle of last year, central government got
tired of bailing out the BigThree, a constant drain on the national economy, and decided the timewas right to usher in a period of consolidation. Joining the Chinese carriers together is a regular occurrence, amajor clean-up occurring every decade or so, but the past ninemonths have been extraordinary in howfar the aerospace over the People’s Republic has changed, especially in the air cargo sector.
2 AIR LOGISTICSCHINA
n a nation that stretches fromNewDelhi to Vladivostok in longitude and fromLake Baikal to southern Laos in longitude, airplanes have for the past fewdecades been key to getting around in China. As the nation has soared up the GDP rankings in the past decade so too
FREIGHTER WITHIN
Take China Eastern, for instance. It has
gone fromhaving one air cargo outlet to three in little over fourmonths. Then it revealed the news that itwas to swallowup its competitor and geographic neighbour, Shanghai Airlines, a six-month process thatwas completed officially on 28 January this year, costing US$1.3 billion. The Shanghai Airlines brand continues, as does its cargo division. The president of China Eastern, Liu
Shaoyong, talked about the reasons for the consolidation of these two airlines for the first time at a press conference inMarch. “The developments of our two companies had encountered bottleneckswith bad operation; thus,we hoped to turn these around together,”he said. The cargo business of China Eastern Airlines has been
Liu Shaoyong – hoping for a turnaround
carried out by China Cargo Airlines,whichwas set up in 1998 as a joint venturewith the nation’s largest shipping line, COSCO. At present, China Cargo Airlines owns sixMD-11
freighters and two B747-400Fs and it has just introduced a full-freighter B777 aircraft recently. It alsowet-leases three A300-600Fs. The company plans to replace the MD-11Fswith B777Fs gradually and, by the end of 2015,
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60