AmsterdamReview BRIEFS • BRIEFS • BRIEFS Fly US sees real rate improvement


INDONESIAN CARRIER GARUDA flew back into Europe on 2 June after an absence of six yearswith the start of daily A330-200 services between Jakarta and Amsterdam via Dubai in both directions. The airline has appointed Euro- pean Cargo Services (ECS) as cargo general sales agent in the Netherlands to maximise the bellyhold potential of the widebody aircraft deployed on the route.


KLM IS TO BOOST its African coverage with the intro- duction of five A330-200widebody flights aweek to Kigali in Rwanda,with a stop-over in Entebbe, on 31October. The aircraft offers up to 14 tonnes of bellyhold cargo payload on mediumto extended-range operations.


SAN FRANCISCO-BASED airport real estate developer AMB Property Corporation has leased 5,850m2


of space in


its AMB Fokker Logistics Center, located next to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, to freight forwarder and logistics services provider UTi Nederland – a subsidiary of UTi Worldwide.


SCHIPHOL CONTINUES to attract cargo services. As ACWwent to press, Alajnihah Air Transport of Libya was expected to launch a twice-weekly freight service between the Dutch capital and Tripoli on 18 July.


AMSTERDAM-BASED Martinair Cargo returned to Costa Rica on 7May. A weeklyMD-11F between Amsterdamand San José now routes via Miami on the outward leg before returning direct to Europe.Martinair said it plans to step up the frequency to twice-weekly in the autumn. Space on the flights is represented in San José by Besana Business Devel- opment, a local cargo general sales agent.


A TOTAL OF 166,000 SLOTS were issued by Amsterdam Airport Schiphol at the 126th IATA (International Air Trans- port Association) conference in Berlin last month (June), a reduction of 17,000 compared to last winter.


Carlo deHaas,managing director of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol-based cargo general sales agent Fly Us, points out that the company has recently expanded its office in Brussels in an effort to grow its business platform further in the Belgian market. Since May, Fly Us has been selling the belly-


hold capacity of Barcelona-based low-cost carrier Vueling Airlines in the Benelux countries in part- nership with Cargo Nostrum, a Spanish GSA for the carrier worldwide. Vueling offers A320 flights out of Amsterdam


and Brussels up to five times a day to destinations in theUK, numerous citieswithin Spain and else- where in Continental Europe. Fly Us also feeds overnight cargo shipments


fromtheBelgiummarket toAir India’sB777 ser- vices out of Frankfurt and London Heathrow airports and this is another operation that is going pleasingly well, deHaas noted.


de Haas: “we’re heading in the right direction”


Volumes have been up year-on-year in the first


sixmonths of 2010,with allmarkets –Canada, the US, Central and South America, India, Australia and Asia – seeing strong demand, he said. Rates too are improving, with the GSA having


seen an average increase in prices of about 10 to 15 percent – “which indicates we’re heading in the right direction,” deHaas added. Looking to the future, he pointed to the new


cargo reservation system that has recently been introduced by client carrier AirAsia X, an upgrade that will encourage better operational performance and better data exchange between the GSA and the carrier. Plus, Fly Us is now ready to introduce the


American Airlines temperature-controlled Expe- diteTC product in the Netherlands. “With this new product, we can offer guaranteed uplift for


pharma in a temperature-controlled environment” on the airline’s daily Brussels - Chicago O’Hare services, deHaas observed.


“This year will definitely be more successful than 2009,” says Ton Smulders,managing director of Amsterdam-based cargo general sales agent (GSA) Active Airline Representa- tives. “We’re not quite back to pre-crisis levels, and 2008 was a record year, but the future is promising,” he added. He expects to continue trading in exactly the same way


that the company has for so many years, which helped it survive the worst of the recessionary period over the last couple of years. That means concentrating on customer service, Smul-


ders pointed out, and being proactive about dealing with any potential problems. It also means keeping in constant contact with its customers – the freight forwarders.


‘The future is promising’ for GSA Active Airline Representatives June’s results were “well over budget”, he said, with


especially good business on Leisure Cargo, Aeroflot and Arkefly. Charters have been another source of capacity for Active Airline Representatives to sell. These may be only the “icing on the cake” – work that


cannot be relied upon but is certainly nice to have – but a good amount of this sort of uplift has been arranged recently; either as ad hoc flights, such as those moving humanitarian aid to Haiti, or in the formof operations con- ducted by client carriers including Aeroflot and Coyne. Space on the latter airline to Iraq has been very suc-


cessfully sold by Active Airline Representatives in recentmonths, Smulders concluded.


Page 12


19 July 2010





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