History
The airline was established and started operations in 1969. It was formed as DHL Worldwide Express by Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom and Robert Lynn to shuttle bills of lading between Hawaii and San Francisco. It rebranded as DHL Airways in 1983 and grew rapidly, initiating services to the Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, creating a new industry of door-to-door express services in the Pacific Basin and later worldwide. Lufthansa and Japan Airlines each acquired a 5% stake, increased to 25% each in 1992. Deutsche Post acquired a 22.5% stake in 1998, gradually increasing it to 100% in 2001-2002. The airline was spun off from DHL and a majority stake sold to a private investor in order to comply with Federal foreign ownership laws. FedEx and UPS challenged the U.S. citizenship of DHL Airways, asserting to the Department of Transportation that DPWN exercised effective operational control of the airline.
In July 2003, a US investment group headed by John Dasburg (now Chairman, Chief Executive and President of the airline), completed a management buy-out of the airline using financing provided by Boeing Capital and subsequently changed the name to ASTAR Air Cargo on 30 June 2003. Its two target customers continue to be DHL Worldwide Express and the United States Air Force. The airline is owned by John Dasburg (37%), Richard Blum (33%) and Michael Klein (30%).
In 2007 DHL Express bought 49.5% of nonvoting and 24.5% of voting stock and added a member to the board of ASTAR Air Cargo .
On May 28, 2008, DHL announced the plan to terminate its business relationship with ASTAR by outsourcing the air transportation to its competitor UPS. In May 2009 DHL terminated their plan to outsource to UPS and Astar continued operating out of DHL's CVG facility.
The company decided to shut down when its contract with DHL, its largest customer, was terminated abruptly effective June 1st, 2012. All remaining active aircraft were put in storage the next day.
Read more about this topic: Astar Air Cargo
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