Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Joint Management of Air Freight Routes by Asian and European Cargo Carriers

New Contract Will See Cooperative Pricing, Sales and Handling
Shipping News Feature

JAPAN – GERMANY – EUROPE – All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Lufthansa Cargo have announced that they will launch a strategic air freight joint venture on routes between Japan and Europe and vice versa, creating the first worldwide cargo joint venture of its kind, according to both parties. The two companies have previously been heavily involved in many antitrust cases the world over but this joint venture has received approval from competition regulators in Japan and has been ‘positively assessed’ by external counsel for compliance with relevant EU antitrust regulations.

News of talks between the two were mentioned in May this year by Lufthansa Executive Board member Harry Hohmeister and now ANA and Lufthansa Cargo say they can together manage activities covered by the joint venture (much as the proscribed P3 ocean container network had proposed to operate) including network planning, pricing, sales and handling on all routes between Japan and Europe. Based on a contract which is due to be signed in the coming weeks, the two carriers aim to introduce the joint approach on shipments originating from Japan to Europe in late 2014/early 2015 and for shipments from Europe to Japan mid-2015.

The new cooperative venture aims to benefit customers by generating a greater selection of routings and a wider range of service options with the hope that customers will especially profit from a larger and faster network with more direct flights, more destinations and more frequencies. By their moving under one roof at major stations, such as the airports Narita and Nagoya in Japan and Dusseldorf and Frankfurt in Germany, customers will be able to find the services of both airlines at a single location.