The Russian carrier will deploy a brand new Ilyushin freighter IL-96-400T (transport) beginning at the end of April linking the German city with Guangzhou, Nanjing and Tianjin in China.
The aircraft is capable of lifting up to 83.5 tonnes, but has a limited range of 5,200 km when fully loaded which makes intermediate stops necessary. In this case it will be the Russian capital’s Vnukovo airport, Atlant-Soyuz’s home base, where the plane will land for refueling purposes en route from Germany to China and on the way back.
The growing Leipzig/Halle hub
EAC will market the entire capacity of the plane that will land twice or three times per week at Leipzig/Halle. There, DHL is presently building their intercontinental hub that includes the shifting of most of their Brussels activities to the East German airport in April.
For securing fast and reliable traffic flows to Russia and China, DHL has signed a capacity purchase agreement with eastern Air Cargo for as much as 27 tonnes on the flights of the IL-96-400T from Leipzig/Halle to Moscow and further to China.
“This pact secures us and our partner Atlant-Soyuz a basic tonnage on all eastbound flights,” states EAC’s general manager Stephan Blank. He also confirmed the delivery of the first out of a total order of five newly constructed Ilyushins to Atlant-Soyuz. The airline will now commence their test programme and apply for the needed traffic rights to link Europe with China.
“These permits can only be obtained after an airline has got all necessary licenses for a new aircraft,” Blank said, explaining why this step was not initiated prior to the delivery of the Ilyushin transporter.
More cargo flights to Belarus
Further, he announced the doubling of cargo flights from Leipzig/Halle to Minsk in Belarus from once weekly to twice weekly by Genex Airlines. The service that commenced last October proved to be quite successful with the AN-26 (4.5 tonnes) fully loaded.
This route is considered pioneering by the EAC management and could well prove to be a possible door opener for future business cases. This is in part due to the interline agreement Lufthansa Cargo has signed with EAC last January for these flights, making the Belarus carrier essentially one of their East European feeders.
“I assume that this is only the beginning of more such contracts to assure a fast and reliable cargo flow from Germany to the East European countries,” stated an optimistic Blank. He could be right since the turnover of express shipments and general air freight is growing very rapidly at Leipzig/Halle.
