AirBridgeCargo (RU, Ulyanovsk Vostochny) will move some of its scheduled flights to Liège as it faces the possibility of losing slots at Amsterdam Schiphol Schiphol, reports CargoFacts. Liège is located 192 kilometres away in neighbouring Belgium, and the Russian carrier is in talks with its road network providers to accommodate the move.
"With significant improvement of our inland options and building a mutually beneficial collaboration with our trucking partners, we are optimistic about ABC's future in Liège and the benefits it will bring to our customers," said Sergey Lazarev, ABC's General Director.
As previously reported, movements at Schiphol are restricted to 500,000 per year, and as it draws near to that cap, carriers which fail to hit 80% of their slots risk losing them altogether. Facing uncertainty over how many slots it will retain at the Dutch airport, AirBridge Cargo has been scouting other locations.
Amsterdam is the fourth busiest airport for ABC, from which it currently operates 21x weekly to destinations in Russia and Europe, with ten of these weekly flights originating in the United States and stopping in Amsterdam. It will shift up to twelve of its routes to Liège. Another option had been Maastricht but, according to The Loadstar, ABC preferred to look outside of the Netherlands.
