AirBridgeCargo Airlines

The company entered the scheduled cargo market on 1 April 2004, when the first AirBridgeCargo branded Boeing 747 made its inaugural commercial flight on route from Beijing to Luxembourg.

As of March 2022, AirBridgeCargo was forced to suspend all operations due to sanctions against Russia which rendered the entire fleet unusable. In July 2022, the airline announced it would comply with sanctions and prepare to return 14 leased aircraft - which made up the majority of its fleet - to its lessors.

In March 2023, it became known that the company planned to resume flights using Ilyushin Il-96 aircraft. Volga-Dnepr had begun searching for pilots with appropriate training. However, by late 2023 these plans were abandoned, with two Il-96 formerly stored and already prepared for AirBridgeCargo being delivered to Sky Gates Airlines instead.

Destinations

Prior to the suspension of all services, ABC had been present in Asia, Europe and North America. It operates a scheduled freighter route network of 37 destinations as of November 2019, focused on Europe, Asia and the United States.

Fleet

As of March 2024, AirBridgeCargo currently no longer operates any aircraft after returning their fleet to its lessors. AirBridgeCargo formerly operated the following aircraft:

Accidents and incidents

On September 11, 2012, an AirBridgeCargo Boeing 747-8F experienced a major engine malfunction that spread a significant amount of metallic debris on the runway. Like in a similar event during pre-flight taxi tests, the low pressure turbine shaft separated and moved the low pressure turbine (by design to avoid turbine overspeed) backwards braking on surrounding hardware.

On July 31, 2013, an AirBridgeCargo Boeing 747-8F experienced core engine icing that caused engine malfunctions and damage to three engines near Chengdu, China, while en route to Hong Kong; the aircraft landed safely at its destination. Boeing and General Electric would later work on software changes to mitigate the effects of core engine icing.