Malaysia Airlines Cargo (MASkargo) – which saw a 28 per cent nose dive in cargo volume in the first half year of 2009 year-on-year – has said it expects to see a turnaround of its cargo volumes only in the second half of next year.

The Kuala Lumpur-based cargo carrier took a major hit when demand from its main market, China, fell by more than 30 per cent.

“We see a light at the end of the tunnel. We see some flattening at the bottom. There is not really a jump yet but we’ve seen the bottom flattened,” MASkargo general manager of business development and sales (cargo), Mohd Yunus Idris said according to Bernama.

Mohd Yunus said the carrier was now looking “aggressively” at marketing its charter services to help offset the drastic decline in scheduled cargo traffic. He said the company was currently receiving at least 12 enquiries per day globally.

“They (the enquiries) come as far as Rio De Janeiro and Buenos Aires but we don’t fly there,” Mohd Yunus said. “The one we are working very hard on is originating from Australia and we also have enquiries from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. And then we have enquiries from Bintulu,” he said.

Mas kargo recently transported two out of six motor ball valves weighing 22 tonnes each from Frankfurt, Germany, to Bintulu using a B747-400F with the remaining four valves to be transported by mid-August.

The motor ball valves are mainly used in pipeline stations and offshore platforms as shut-off devices for gas, oil, water and other products and are being transported to Bintulu for use at the Malaysian state-owned Petronas oil and gas processing facility.

On another development, Mohd Yunus said that MASkargo had secured a fifth freedom flight to Indonesia.

“What actually happened is that we are allowed to uplift cargo from Australia and discharge them in Jakarta and at the same time, we uplift cargo from Jakarta. This goes together with the passengers,” he said.