ABC adds two 747-8s to its fleet

Russia-based AirBridgeCargo Airlines (ABC) this week took delivery of two 747-8 freighters from Boeing. These are the first two 747-8Fs delivered to ABC under a Memorandum of Understanding for twenty of the type signed by ABC’s parent, the Volga-Dnepr Group (although  Boeing’s customer is US-based investment company,  which in turn has leased the freighters to AirBridge). ABC said it would deploy the two new freighters “on the expanding network under winter schedule 2015/2016, between Asia and the United States.”

ABC now operates eight 747-8Fs, five 747-400ERFs and two 747-400Fs, and also ACMI leases two 747-400BCFs from Air Atlanta Icelandic.

As a side note, the two freighters that went to ABC this week were the 99^th and 100^th 747-8s delivered. Cargolux took the first one in October 2011, and of the one hundred total, sixty-three have been freighters, twenty-nine have been in passenger configuration, and eight were in BBJ or VIP configuration.