Starting from 1 October, ABC will increase its scheduled flights from Moscow to Tokyo’s Narita Airport and on the onward connection to Seoul, Korea, to three services a week. ABC’s flights to Tokyo and Seoul’s Incheon International Airport will operate every Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

The extra frequencies reflect ABC’s growth in the Asia Pacific region and extend its commitment to the Japanese and Korean air cargo and manufacturing markets, which began in 2007 and 2010 respectively.

'Asia Pacific as a whole is vital for Volga-Dnepr Group with three of the world’s top five economies located in the region. We see fundamental changes in APAC, with the constantly growing importance and influence of Asian economies as well as increasing intra-Asian trade and fast-growing consumer demand,' said Anton Khodakovskiy, Volga Dnepr Group’s Vice President, Japan and South Korea.

The new services will help ABC’s customers to meet increased consumer demand, especially in the automotive sector. Over the last eight months, ABC’s tonnage from Japan and Korea has grown by 40%. The highest level of growth has been seen on AirBridgeCargo’s routes to Europe and Russia, where volumes rose 20% and 46% respectively over this period. Overall, ABC transported 6,810 tonnes of cargo from Japan and Korea in the eight months to the end of August.

AirBridgeCargo’s DAP (delivered as promised) performance figures on these routes were also above the industry average, reaching 90% during in the 1 January-31 August, 2014 period.