In June, Edelweiss, a Switzerland-based holiday airline, will start weekly direct connections from Zurich to four new destinations: Beijing; Anchorage; Orlando, Fla.; and Beirut.
'These new direct services strengthen the carrier's position in some of the world's major air cargo markets such as China, North America and the Middle East,' Swiss WorldCargo said in a statement on Thursday.
In China, Swiss WorldCargo is already represented with daily flights to Hong Kong and Shanghai. The new weekly services via Edelweiss to Anchorage and Orlando further raises the number of destinations served by Swiss WorldCargo in North America, which includes New York (JFK and Newark, N.J.), Boston, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Montreal and Toronto.
'While in Alaska the demand of air cargo capacity mainly comes from the seafood export sector, in Florida, the fourth-largest trade goods export market in the USA, it includes a wide array of industries,' the airline said.
The direct connection served by Edelweiss between Zurich and Beirut offers potential for the transportation of smaller and medium-sized cargo shipments.
'Like most of the routes we serve with the Edelweiss Air fleet, these new flights are small in volume terms, but require as much sophistication of service and reliability as any of the other specialist markets which we focus on, so that both Swiss WorldCargo and Edelweiss Air have benefited and will continue to enjoy new, attractive business opportunities,' said Oliver Evans, chief cargo officer at Swiss.
This summer the connection between Zurich and Vancouver-Calgary, Canada will also be reinstated. In addition, Swiss WorldCargo's offerings will continue to include Edelweiss' other destinations in Kenya, Tanzania, Mexico, the Maldives, the Dominican Republic, Kosovo and Macedonia.
