Emirates SkyCargo boosted its capacity to the U.S.’s third largest city, Chicago, with the start of daily non-stop flights.
The Dubai-Chicago service, launched last week and operated by a Boeing 777-200LR, offers nearly 120 tonnes of belly-hold cargo capacity a week each way, which will further stimulate a growing demand for Emirates SkyCargo services to and from Chicago, particularly from the Middle East, India, Asia, the Far East and Australia.
The new daily belly-hold capacity supplements the twice-weekly freighter service to Chicago from Dubai, which was launched in March 2013. “As a city with one of the highest GDPs in the United States, and it being home to some of the world’s largest and best known companies, makes Chicago and its greater area, a very important commercial and economic hub,” said Duncan Watson, Emirates Vice President, cargo commercial Southern Africa and Americas.
The first of the weekly freighter flights, which departs Dubai on a Thursday, connects with Chicago via Copenhagen and Amsterdam, while the second weekly flight on a Sunday has a stop in Copenhagen on the way to Chicago.
“Before we started freighter services to the city, it was already a growing feeder market for our cargo services from New York,” Watson said. “Since then we have had a steady increase in the tonnage of cargo moved into and out of Chicago. For example in 2009, we carried 4,900 tonnes of cargo from Chicago via New York, whereas for the first six months of this year we have already carried nearly the same amount. On the imports side, we carried just 190 tonnes in 2009, which has grown to over 2,000 tonnes in the same six-month period. The additional capacity on the new daily Chicago flight will further stimulate demand for our cargo services to Dubai and onto our worldwide network.”
The top markets to which Emirates SkyCargo carries Chicago’s exports include the UAE, Australia, India and Saudi Arabia, while its imports are mainly from Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, India and the Scandinavian markets.
Chicago’s imports and exports range from agricultural goods, to mobile phones, fresh food, fashion goods and pharmaceuticals. Amongst its key imports are high-tech products such as computer parts and telecommunications products, machinery components, land vehicles and parts, garments, personal household goods, chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
Chicago’s main exports are raw materials and industrial consumables, machinery components, capital equipment, fashion goods, frozen and fresh foods.