To meet increased demand for its capacity and services from international customers, ABC supported its growth with further investment to upgrade its freighter fleet. In 2014 another new generation Boeing 747-8 freighter joined ABC’s fleet, which now has 13 modern B747 freighters, including six of the new generation -8Fs.
To provide clients with an enhanced service offering and more point-to-point deliveries within its network, the airline expanded its footprint on all of its existing markets. During the course of 2014, ABC launched new routes to Dallas/Fort Worth, Leipzig, Munich, Basel and Malmo and added more services to its already well-established stations such as Chicago, Milan, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul. This expansion allowed the airline to offer customers in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific an even wider choice of routes and frequencies. ABC currently offers 218 scheduled freighter flights a week to 11 countries and more than 400 connections with a delivery time within 48 hours on almost all of its origin-destination pairs via its hub in Moscow-Sheremetyevo.
Denis Ilin, Executive President of AirBridgeCargo Airlines, said: "2014 was a milestone for AirBridgeCargo and we used our tenth anniversary as the perfect opportunity to thank our customers all over the world for their support with celebration events in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, China, Korea and Japan. Thanks to this growing support, ABC has been able to grow consistently with a compound growth rate of 11% over the last 5 years. We have earned our customers' trust by providing them with a reliable service, delivered by one of the youngest and most modern freighter fleets in the industry. Our growth has meant we have been able to provide the levels of capacity our customers need from us and launch services in new markets that they want us to serve.”
The carrier’s main strategy in 2014 was to be able to respond quickly to market changes, while maintaining operational excellence for its customers, in particular through investing in improved processes at its main Moscow (SVO) hub.
"Customer loyalty and support, together with close monitoring of market changes and our ability to react quickly to both challenges and new opportunities, allowed us to remain highly competitive throughout 2014 and grow our business in what is still a highly turbulent air cargo environment. In 2015, ABC will continue to serve the main gateways in all the regions where we are present and ensure we offer sufficient cargo capacity to respond to the long-term volume requirements of our customers. At the same time we aim to further increase our network foorprint by adding destinations to support smaller, niche or even short-term project business opportunities as we ensure our customers have the best access to the logistics solutions that suit them most. The geographical location of our hub in Moscow positions us perfectly to introduce services to literally any point in Europe and beyond. The global market will remain challenging in 2015 but I look forward with confidence that we will keep pace with the demand and opportunities that exist for us." Denis Ilin added.
