Qatar Airways Cargo resumes passenger freighter service to Penang

Qatar Airways Cargo will recommence belly capacity services to Penang, Malaysia, effective February 2, 2023.

It will operate an A330 passenger freighter to Penang via Qatar Airways’ passenger flights to Phuket, four times a week. This adds more than 70 tonnes of available capacity each week.

The service complements the existing seven weekly belly-hold flights to the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, providing customers with over 200 tonnes of cargo capacity from Malaysia.

Guillaume Halleux, chief officer cargo at Qatar Airways Cargo commented: “Our network planning team saw a perfect opportunity in the passenger A330 flight’s ground-time in Phuket, and have worked hard to establish a well-scheduled, interim passenger-freighter connection to Penang and back to maximise the cargo capacity into and out of Malaysia’s second-busiest cargo airport.

“This next generation-style multi-modal strategy sees Qatar Airways’ Doha-Phuket passenger connection becoming a Phuket-Penang-Phuket passenger-freighter for four days of the week, before returning to Doha again as a passenger service with lower deck cargo.”

In other news, Etihad Cargo is set to introduce an additional three weekly flights to John F Kennedy International Airport (JFK) from April 24.

Read: UAE’s Etihad Cargo to increase capacity offering to US

The additional flights will bring Etihad Cargo’s total cargo capacity to over 600 tonnes out of the US per week.

The flights will be operated with both Airbus A350 and Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft, which offer significantly less fuel burn and CO2 emissions than previous-generation twin aisle aircraft.