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Virgin Australia's new HK route proves popular with air cargo customers
AIR cargo customers have been filling the bellies of Virgin Australia's recently introduced five-times a week Airbus A330-200 passenger service between Melbourne and Hong Kong.
The 15 tonne belly offering is already looking extremely promising in both directions and may even spill over to Virgin Australia's Melbourne-Los Angeles service, according to London's Air Cargo News.
While the inaugural flight went purposely light on cargo for operational reasons - four tonnes of mostly perishables including health supplements, wine, fresh fish, meat and cheese, heading northbound - the subsequent return flights in the immediate days following were nearly fully booked, hitting an average of 12 tonnes with a 97 per cent load factor.
Cargo sales on these Virgin Australia flights are marketed by Virgin Atlantic Cargo, which also sells space on Virgin Australia's existing long-haul services from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne to Los Angeles.
"The new route is extremely significant because we are now able to give our customers in both points of sale more choice with regular frequencies to and from Hong Kong, which is one of the world's premier air cargo markets and gateways," says John Lloyd, managing director of Virgin Atlantic Cargo, adding "our expectations for the route are high".
The southbound portion is perhaps a no-brainer - the strong production economies of Hong Kong and China generate substantial e-commerce shipments for Australian consumers, along with some degree of more traditional electronics and general cargo.
But it is the northbound leg that has exceeded expectations. "We were also pleasantly surprised about the potential of the northbound market and the level of demand we identified," says Mr Lloyd.
He highlights the State of Victoria's pre-eminence as a high-quality agricultural producer which is generating a good level of demand from customers for Australian produce across a wide-range of fish, meat and packaged food goods, as well as for milk powder.
From a revenue perspective, the composition of this northbound produce is a healthy situation - dense cargo which makes for very good positional revenue.
"We expect both the southbound and northbound sectors to make an important contribution to the overall route profitability," Mr Lloyd adds.
The 15 tonne belly offering is already looking extremely promising in both directions and may even spill over to Virgin Australia's Melbourne-Los Angeles service, according to London's Air Cargo News.
While the inaugural flight went purposely light on cargo for operational reasons - four tonnes of mostly perishables including health supplements, wine, fresh fish, meat and cheese, heading northbound - the subsequent return flights in the immediate days following were nearly fully booked, hitting an average of 12 tonnes with a 97 per cent load factor.
Cargo sales on these Virgin Australia flights are marketed by Virgin Atlantic Cargo, which also sells space on Virgin Australia's existing long-haul services from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne to Los Angeles.
"The new route is extremely significant because we are now able to give our customers in both points of sale more choice with regular frequencies to and from Hong Kong, which is one of the world's premier air cargo markets and gateways," says John Lloyd, managing director of Virgin Atlantic Cargo, adding "our expectations for the route are high".
The southbound portion is perhaps a no-brainer - the strong production economies of Hong Kong and China generate substantial e-commerce shipments for Australian consumers, along with some degree of more traditional electronics and general cargo.
But it is the northbound leg that has exceeded expectations. "We were also pleasantly surprised about the potential of the northbound market and the level of demand we identified," says Mr Lloyd.
He highlights the State of Victoria's pre-eminence as a high-quality agricultural producer which is generating a good level of demand from customers for Australian produce across a wide-range of fish, meat and packaged food goods, as well as for milk powder.
From a revenue perspective, the composition of this northbound produce is a healthy situation - dense cargo which makes for very good positional revenue.
"We expect both the southbound and northbound sectors to make an important contribution to the overall route profitability," Mr Lloyd adds.
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