Korean Air wins Cargo Airline of the Year' award

Air Transport World (ATW) named Korean Air Cargo as a "Cargo Airline of the Year for 2003".

Korean Air has been a significant force in air cargo for more than 30 years. The airline started its air cargo division in 1969 shortly after privatization. Its timing allowed it to take advantage of its location between North America and burgeoning Asian economies to build a freight operation that now provides 32 percent of Korean Air's operating revenues.

For the last decade the airline has been one of the top three combination freight carriers in the world, with the largest freighter fleet of any transpacific airline, providing 31 cities around the world with regular freighter service.

China's booming growth has given Korean Air Cargo a real boost, and the airline expects to produce more than 20 percent annual increase in its airfreight traffic to/from that country.  This potential inspired the creation of KAL-SkyBridge, tying Korean Air Cargo's Chinese freight flow into the shipping and trucking operation of its parent company, Hanjin, for seamless intermodal worldwide delivery in as little as five days.

The airline gained greatly from the opening of new cargo facilities at Incheon International Airport, where its 623,000-sq.-ft. complex is a duplicate of its new New York JFK facility in terms of technology and flow.  With the growth potential of the Chinese market and Incheon's location between China and North America, Korean Air expects Incheon to become one of the world's largest freight airports by 2010.

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