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The story
The airline was established and started operations in 1972, as Air Bridge Carriers at East Midlands Airport. In September 1992 the name Hunting Cargo Airlines was adopted and in 1997 the transfer of all airline operations to Ireland was completed. In June 1998 the Hunting Group sold its aviation arm to a joint consortium of CMB Compagnie Maritime Belge and Safair (part of the Imperial Group) and the airline was rebranded Air Contractors.
The Imperial Group transferred its 49% shareholding in the company to 3P Air Freighters/Petercam S.A. in 2007.
Air Contractors acquired French carrier Europe Airpost on 14 March 2008. Following the acquisition of EAP into the ACL group of companies, the group was rebranded ASL Aviation Group, representing the three core activities of the group; Airlines, Support and Leasing.
In 2010 Air Contractors entered a new era with the start of passenger flying on a Boeing 737-300 aircraft in conjunction with its Group partner, Europe Airpost.
On 4 June 2015, ASL Aviation Group announced that Air Contractors would be rebranded as ASL Airlines Ireland, Europe Airpost as ASL Airlines France, Farnair Hungary as ASL Airlines Hungary and Farnair Switzerland as ASL Airlines Switzerland.
The company announced on 5 February 2016 that it had agreed to buy TNT Airways and PAN Air, on the condition that FedEx's purchase of TNT goes ahead. The sale went through in May 2016. TNT Airways became ASL Airlines Belgium and Pan Air became ASL Airlines Spain. In early 2017, ASL Aviation Group rebranded as ASL Aviation Holdings.
Subsidiary ASL Airlines Switzerland ceased all operations on 1 February 2018, while ASL Airlines Spain ceased all operations in August of that same year.
From Wikipedia’s article on ASL Airlines Ireland, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5