DHL Express books holiday airline Condor for cargo flights

DHL Express will now fly cargo with the holiday airline Condor. The first cargo flights under the partnership started this week. The partnership is initially limited until the end of May. The cargo flights will be operated from the Express Hub in Leipzig to Shannon, Milan, and Cologne. This allows Condor to somewhat cushion its downturn in passenger traffic, while DHL Express gains urgently needed additional capacity.

(Bonn/New Isenburg) – Packages instead of passengers: Germany’s most popular holiday airline Condor is now taking off with four Boeing 767s on behalf of DHL Express, the world’s leading provider of express services. The first cargo flights under the partnership started this week. The Condor aircraft will be processed at Europe’s largest DHL Express Hub in Leipzig and transport shipments on a total of three routes to Shannon in Ireland, Milan-Malpensa in Italy, and Cologne. In the future, the transport of Covid-19 vaccines is also possible on these flights. The partnership is initially limited until the end of May.

Adapting flexibly to circumstances

“We have already increased cargo flights last year and expanded our expertise in this area. We are very pleased to now work with such an experienced partner as DHL Express,” says Christian Schmitt, COO of Condor. “The partnership also shows that Condor can adapt flexibly to circumstances in special situations and thus contributes an important part to the international supply chain in collaboration with DHL.””This firm partnership between cargo and passenger is unique so far,” adds Markus Otto, Senior Vice President Aviation Europe at DHL Express. “It allows us to respond even faster and more flexibly to the continued high customer demand for international express shipping. With the additional Condor capacities, we can further improve our service quality and transit times and continue our growth trajectory.”

Serving global express volume

Since April of last year, Condor has increasingly conducted cargo flights and has mainly transported medical protective equipment such as millions of face masks, protective suits, and gloves, in addition to e-commerce goods. In this context, part of the Boeing 767 fleet has also been converted to pure cargo aircraft, and the seats have been removed. At times, 14 out of 16 Boeing 767s were exclusively used for cargo flights. For this purpose, Condor has also trained and deployed special cargo supervisors to ensure smooth operations. In addition to cargo flights, Condor remains committed to the holiday segment: as Germany’s most popular holiday airline, Condor currently serves the Canary Islands, Egypt, Cuba, the Maldives, and the Dominican Republic. For the express division of Deutsche Post DHL Group, the partnership is part of a program to meet the globally increasing express volumes and to grow continuously. Earlier this year, the company announced the additional purchase of new large cargo aircraft of the Boeing 777F type. Photo: © DHLwww.dhl.com      www.condor.com