Russia-based Transaero Airlines has signed a contract to lease 14 long-haul wide-body airplanes, including five Boeing 777s from Singapore Airlines and nine Boeing 747-400s from Japan Airlines. Boeing 777s will be used to develop both international and domestic routes, including the Far East while the Boeing 747-400s will be used only on international routes. The new aircraft will replace Boeing 747-200s and Boeing 747-300s and will start replenishing Transaero’s fleet from May 2010.

Transaero has added Moscow-Beijing, St Petersburg-Athens and Yekaterinburg- Barcelona to its summer schedule. For the first three months of 2010 the airline’s cargo traffic in freight tonne kilometres was 537.3 million, a 69.9 per cent increase over the same period in 2009. General director Olga Pleshakova said: “The extraordinary results for Q1 2010 were achieved through the focused, responsible and professional performance of the whole Transaero team in line with the overall development plans of the company. Transaero will continue to strengthen its position in the market, both on domestic and international routes.”

EUROPE & CIS: ABC adds Seoul to Asia network Seoul in Korea is the latest destination in Asia to be added to AirBridgeCargo Airlines’ growing network of Boeing 747 all-cargo operations. ABC, the scheduled cargo business of Volga-Dnepr Group, has launched a weekly B747-400ERF flight to the Korean city. The flight will operate from Frankfurt via the airline’s hub at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport and Narita in Japan. ABC expects the main commodities on the route will be high tech products and spare parts for the automotive industry.

In Asia, AirBridgeCargo’s network also includes 12 flights a week to Shanghai, seven services a week to Hong Kong, six operations per week to Beijing and two B747-400ERF flights to Tokyo’s Narita Airport. Earlier this month, ABC also extended its route network into Scandinavia with the launch of a new twice-weekly B747 freighter service from Malmö Airport to Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow. The new routes form part of ABC’s network development strategy in Europe and Asia.