Cargoitalia operates first flight

Gilardoni: ?Operationally, the flight went perfectly."

Cargoitalia, Italy’s new all-cargo carrier, performed its first commercial flight on Saturday July 25 using an MD11SF plane.

The flight left Milan Malpensa, bound for Hong Kong, carrying cargo on behalf of three major Italian forwarders. It returned to Milan with a technical stop at Almaty (Kazakhstan) on Monday July 27th.

The airline, born out of the ashes of Alitialia’s cargo operations, has plans to fly into Abu Dhabi.

Roberto Gilardoni, commercial director, said: “Operationally, the flight went perfectly. Commercially, we achieved average 87% load factors both ways, which is very gratifying and is an indication of the market’s demand, enthusiasm and loyalty for an Italian-owned and operated service.”

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The new Cargoitalia is the result of amalgamating the original Cargoitalia (which suspended operations in 2008) with the recently-purchased Alitalia cargo business.

Cargoitalia’s new owners are ALIS (66.7%) and Intesa SanPaolo (33.3%).

ALIS is majority owned by the family of Cargoitalia’s chairman and CEO, Alcide Leali.