IAG Cargo has announced it will begin offering two new European freighter services through its shared capacity agreement with DHL.
One of the services will fly between Madrid and Amsterdam and the other will add a stop in Paris CDG to an existing London Luton-Frankfurt flight that IAG offers through its DHL partnership.
The British Airways, Iberia and Aer Lingus parent said it would start offering the new Madrid-Amsterdam service from August 18 while the Frankfurt-Paris-London operation would begin on August 24.
Both services will be operated using an Airbus A300 freighter, offering a maximum 42 tonne payload.
A spokesperson said that while DHL would operate the flights, IAG Cargo would own part of the capacity on those flights, allowing it to broaden its network through new routes and services.
The twice weekly Madrid–Amsterdam service will reduce the current transit times via truck, improving the “customer proposition for connections from South America and out of Europe”.
As well as the new Frankfurt-Paris-London operation, IAG also offers an existing Paris-London service on another DHL flight.
Trucking connections will be available for the Frankfurt-Paris flight from London Luton to Heathrow and Gatwick.
“This European capacity expansion comes as a direct result of customer demand and complements upgrades made to the Milan and Oporto services at the beginning of 2016,” said Camilo Garcia, head of sales at IAG Cargo.
“The new Madrid – Amsterdam service in particular will enable highly efficient access to and from the growing Latin American pharmaceutical market, while the new Paris, Frankfurt, London “triangle” enables us to offer important capacity in two key European markets.”
IAG Cargo, then led by Steve Gunning, famously backed out of offering its own freighter flights in January 2014 because of overcapacity in the market and the growing cargo capacity offered by passenger aircraft.
However, since then it has been taking space on freighter operations operated by others.
This includes its partnership with Qatar on routes covering Asia, the Middle East, Indian subcontinent and Europe. In co-operation with Finnair, it also takes space on a DHL flight between London Luton and Helsinki.
