A New Air Cargo Route From China
ATC, together with YTO Airlines and Aeroflot, has launched a new route for cargo transportation from China to Moscow, transiting through Phuket airport. Alexey Maltsev, General Director of ATC China, tells about the route:
We are pleased to offer our customers another option for the fastest possible delivery of cargoes from China. The route was developed together with YTO Airlines and our long-time partner Aeroflot Airlines. YTO Airlines B757 freighter departures from Xi’an Airport to Phuket, where the cargo is reloaded onto Aeroflot B777-300 passenger flights. Aeroflot performs 2-3 passenger flights a day from Phuket to Sheremetyevo, which ensures a fast transshipment and cargo delivery to Moscow. The special feature is that upon arrival to Phuket cargoes are not unpacked, but are transshipped from board to board directly on the aircraft packing facilities. This ensures maximum safety of the cargo in transit point. At the moment we have scheduled two weekly flights between Xi’an and Phuket, half of the cargo arriving on one flight is docked the same day, the other half on the next day. In the future we plan to increase the frequency of flights.
board-to-board connection — YTO Airlines and Aeroflot
Arthur Ukrainsky, the head of ATC office in Thailand:
We did a lot of preparatory work to ensure seamless docking in Phuket. The main obstacle was the Phuket airport security requirement to unpack the cargo and to perform its X-ray scanning. But since all shipments are subject to the strictest controls before departing from China, we were able to negotiate a connection without scanning. Phuket airport only performs additional explosive screening of all cargoes. The first flight arrived from Xi’an to Phuket on February 15 and half of the cargo, as we planned, was loaded on board of Aeroflot and departed to Sheremetyevo the same day. It is worth mentioning that this YG9041 Xi’an-Phuket flight was the first cargo flight received at Phuket airport.
ATC and Phuket airport team
unpacking without overloading