In a surprise move, Northwest Airlines Cargo will soon halt all freighter services to Guangzhou, the replacement gateway for Hong Kong, which the airline abandoned near the start of 2007.
The story, initially reported by the South China Morning Post, said the Minneapolis-based airline was leaving Guangzhou, a fast growing industrial region, and shifting operations to its north China air-cargo hub at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport, from which NWA Cargo will operate 12 weekly freighter flights between the U.S. and China.
The move is related to NWA Cargo's grounding of the fuel guzzling Pratt & Whitney-powered 747-200 freighters, which were used for the Guangzhou service. Prior to the announcement, NWA Cargo operated 12 of them.
Dropping Guangzhou did not appear to be related to the airline's fear of overcapacity in Asia.
The announcement by Northwest comes on the heels of other China-related announcements. Earlier this week, UPS said it would move its main air hub for Asia from the Philippines to Shenzhen in China's industrial southern region, a sign of the rapid change in the economic trading balance in Asia.
While UPS said it would be holding back on certain corporate investments because of rising fuel prices and the weak U.S. economy, the company said it would continue to push forward with its expansion plan for China.
UPS said its new intra-Asian hub, at the Shenzhen airport near Hong Kong, would slash at least a day off shipment times-in-transit for Asian customers while boosting service in the manufacturing region immediately to the north.
The halting of Guangzhou service, follows earlier cutbacks of air cargo service for Northwest. In January, NWA dropped the Osaka portion from the outbound Anchorage-Osaka-Guangzhou-Anchorage route, and replaced it with a stop at Tokyo's Narita International Airport. Eastbound, the flight then was to remain the same.
NWA also dropped the entire Narita-Singapore-Bangkok-Narita route to strengthen its existing route structure and make way for new destinations.
At the time, NWA Cargo President Tom Bach said, "we are going to focus on additional Asia to U.S. markets." But the continuing rise in jet fuel prices coupled with the announced merger between Northwest and Delta Air Lines and its outcome on the overall cargo operations will likely result in a significant slowdown in growth of Northwest's all-cargo operation.
Northwest's cargo business has been falling in recent years, particularly after it went into bankruptcy protection. The airline ceded its No. 1 spot among U.S. passenger airlines for cargo revenue to American Airlines last year. |
