History
Air India Cargo was set up in 1954, and started its freighter operations with a Douglas DC-3 aircraft, giving Air India the distinction of being the first Asian airline to operate freighters.
Between the 1980s and 1990s it operated Boeing 747 and Douglas DC-8 freighter aircraft on various international routes through other companies.
In 2006 the airline relaunched freighter services following the merger of Indian Airlines and its domestic subsidiary Alliance Air with Air India; which led to the acquisition of a single Boeing 737-200C aircraft from Alliance's fleet, plus ten additional passenger versiona of the aircraft, of five were converted to freighters. One of these was also painted in Indian Airlines' old livery for a brief period after conversion. All six aircraft were flying on Air India Cargo domestic routes.
Air India also converted four of its Airbus A310-300s into freighters, these were deployed on the Dammam-Frankfurt route. After ending international operations two were leased out to new cargo startup Aryan Cargo Express, while a third was sold to an African company.
In November 2007, Air India partnered with GATI, a leader and pioneer in express distribution and supply chain solutions for a dedicated freighter service using the 737s.
With rising competition from local cargo airlines as well as financial issues, Air India Cargo ended freighter aircraft operations in early 2012.
Read more about this topic: Air India Cargo
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)