ABC airfreight volumes soar in 2017

AirBridgeCargo Airlines (ABC) carried over 700,000 metric tons of cargo last year, a 13 percent increase from 2016, the all-cargo airline said in a statement.    AirBridgeCargo Airlines (ABC), the all-cargo subsidiary of Russia’s Volga-Dnepr Airlines, saw its airfreight volumes soar 13 percent year-over-year to more than 700,000 metric tons in 2017, according to recent data from the airline.
   The carrier attributed the strong growth primarily to “the effective realization of its fleet expansion strategy, the development of solutions for special cargoes, and the introduction of new destinations and the upgrading of existing ones as ABC continues to respond proactively to the capacity and service requirements of its customers worldwide.”
   ABC said the airline’s performance was also helped by a restructuring and centralization of its sales operations that has been complemented by existing regional expertise.
   “In 2017, we concentrated our efforts on the development of special cargo transportation, fine-tuning our internal procedures and processes, aligning our organization structure, and going on the path of digitalization, steps which boosted our volumes of special commodities, with temperature pharma heading the list (+150%), followed by off-size and heavy (+33%), and e-commerce (+26%),” Sergey Lazarev, general director of AirBridgeCargo Airlines, said of the results. “We have also initiated a number of projects aimed at ameliorating service quality – including the introduction of our new control tower to monitor consignments of special cargoes and to proactively respond to service disruptions if any, Envirotainer QEP certification for ABC stations, cooperation with Sky Fresh for automated notifications, and other industry-related initiatives with tech-savvy solutions, which helped to sharpen ABC’s performance.”
   Looking ahead to this year, ABC said in 2018 it will “beef up its service quality with the main focus on further enhancement of special cargo solutions, not only providing its customers with a wide range of products, but also offering digital solutions to make the process of airfreight delivery as transparent and easy as possible.
   “Finding new areas for digital penetration to benefit its customers’ experience will be the main driver of ABC’s development, based on partnership with forward-thinking trustworthy companies, optimization of internal processes and organizational structure, and customized solutions for certain industries, notably the pharmaceutical, aerospace and oil and gas sectors and others,” the company added.