However, while such developments
might suggest a booming Caspian
region air cargo market, the picture
painted by the airline executives involved is much more one of longer term
steady expansion, primarily fuelled by
oil and gas industry demand, rather
than a future Klondike.
“It is not a huge market and it is not
going to grow to be a huge market, at
least in the short-term,” stated Coyne.
He explained that the motivation
for Coyne Airways recently adding
a second weekly freighter flight into
Tbilisi was pressure from customers for
a higher frequency service rather than
any significant increase in traffic.
“What we are trying to do is look
Tatyana Arslanova, AirBridge Cargo
“When you talk about Kazakhstan
and the rest of the Caspian region,
it still tends to be mainly oil and gas
industry business. We are targeting a
wide range of cargo for our new service
into Almaty but we expect around 60
percent of the traffic to be oil, gas and
other industrial equipment and 30-40
percent to be consumer goods,” commented Arslanova. ACW
after customers in difficult times
by providing an improved quality of
service and hope as a result to pull in
more freight. In fact that has happened
— the market has responded by giving
Larry Coyne, Coyne Airways SWISSWORLDCARGO.COM
us more traffic,” he claimed.
Meanwhile, AirBridgeCargo is effectively serving Almaty as an add-on
to its core Western Europe-Russia-Far
East operations, with a B747-400F
or B747-200F aircraft being routed
Amsterdam-Moscow-Almaty-China,
rather than as a major new stand-alone
service. Arslanova explained that the
Russian carrier’s decision earlier this
year to develop Moscow’s Shereme-tyevo airport as an international hub
operation was also a factor in that
it had created opportunities to pull
in Almaty-destined cargo from all
AirBridgeCargo’s network points in
Europe and Asia.
Generally, the Caspian region
air cargo market continues to be an
overwhelmingly inbound business,
dominated by movement of oil and
gas industry exploration/production
equipment and ancillary items. There
are also shipments of other industrial
equipment and, at least in the case of
Kazakhstan, some slowly increasing
volumes of consumer goods.
