THE historically steeped French city of Toulouse – known as the Pink City because of the pink bricks in all its old buildings – is a centre of world aviation industry with the headquarters of leading aircraft manufacturer – Airbus – located there.
On Sept 15, a new chapter in the history of Malaysian aviation was written in this southern gallic city. On the eve of Malaysia Day, Malaysia Airlines Cargo Sdn Bhd (MASkargo) took delivery of the first of its four A330-200F aircraft from Airbus.
The sleek aircraft, reputed to be the world’s most modern mid-size freighter with a payload of 70 tonnes, will allow MASkargo to further expand its network and capacity.
thesundaypost was among the Malaysian media invited to cover of the event at the Airbus Delivery Centre.
MASkargo became the fourth airline in the world after Etihad Crystal Cargo, Turkish Cargo and Hong Kong Airlines, and the first in Southeast Asia, to own the A330-200F.
The simple yet meaningful ceremony started with an impressive video presentation on the making of the aircraft for MASkargo.
After that, the new MASkargo A330-200F took off on its maiden flight to Amsterdam to receive the first delivery of 70 tonnes of cargo before finally making its journey home to Kuala Lumpur on Sept 19.
At a press conference after the ceremony, MASkargo managing director Shahari Sulaiman said the second A330-200F would be delivered in Nov and the final two in January and April next year.
With the new expanded fleet, he said he was confident MASkargo’s revenue would grow by about RM200mil or 25 percent for the financial year ending Dec 31, 2012.
He also revealed the new aircraft would be used to ply new routes to destinations, including Karangandy in Kazakhstan, Osaka (Japan) and Taipei (Taiwan) apart from increasing its capacity on existing routes such as those to Narita, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Amsterdam, Sharjah and Penang.
Of these routes, he said the most exciting one is to Karagandy, scheduled on Oct 2.
He said businesses in Malaysia could now tap into the lucrative market in Russia via Karagandy, adding that they were now working with the airport authorities in Karangandy and their local freight forwarders to achieve this.
He revealed another lucrative market being looked into is in the inland Chinese cities of Chengdu and Chongqing, where many multi-national IT giants such as HP, Apple and Dell are setting up plants.
Towards this end, he said MASKargo was in talks with several parties, including authorities in both cities, to start operations there next year.
The Malaysian media personnel were also brought to Airbus headquarters for a briefing by A330 marketing manager Cyrille Picard and A380 product marketing director Keith Stonestreet, a day earlier.
Picard said MASkargo made the right decision to purchase the A330-200F because Malaysia would generally experience a healthy growth in airfreight traffic.
This is due to its growing economy and pass-through traffic from the Asia-Pacific region, which is expected to command the highest growth of close to 300 per cent in freighter fleet in the next 20 years.
He also said the freighter demand growth over the next two decades would be driven by Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and India, and freight traffic is expected to triple in the next 20 years with an average annual growth of six per cent from now till 2029.
It was also revealed in the briefing, during a session with Stonestreet, that MASkargo’s parent company Malaysia Airlines would finally take the delivery of its first A380 aircraft next April.
This means another historic chapter in Malaysia’s aviation industry will be written soon in Toulouse when the national carrier takes delivery of the world’s largest passenger aircraft to bolster its fleet.
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