1 April 2020:Emirates is at the forefront in their fight against COVID-19. Here's how Emirates SkyCargo is carrying medical supplies, food materials and other essential items across the globe.
- On Monday 30 March 2020, an Emirates SkyCargo flight carrying close to 500,000 Covid-19 testing kits landed at Sao Paulo airport in Brazil.
- The kits were moved from Guangzhou via Dubai by the air cargo carrier on the first of two such flights operated to transport supplies to Sao Paulo.
- During the same week, Emirates also executed two special charters carrying almost 200 tonnes of medical supplies such as hand sanitizers and protective face masks from Hong Kong to Sydney.
- Another flight transported pharmaceutical supplies to Karachi.
- As part of a special charter operation, an Emirates Boeing 777 freighter transported close to 100 tonnes of relief material including hospital equipment to Milan.
- Over 55 tonnes of high temperature sensitive pharmaceuticals were flown to New York from Mumbai.
- Between March and April, the air cargo carrier will also be operating nine freighter flights to Budapest as part of a charter to transport supplies such as face masks and equipment to Hungary.
- During the last week of March, the carrier operated special flights from Pakistan and India to bring in more than 150 tonnes of perishables to Dubai.
- Dedicated cargo flights from Cairo and Nairobi have also been transporting perishables to Dubai and onwards to other destinations within the Middle East.
"In these trying times, we more than ever stand by our commitment for Emirates SkyCargo to act as a global conveyor belt for the transport of much needed commodities such as food and medicines and also for flying in equipment, machinery and other components which are vital for business continuity across essential industries," said Nabil Sultan, Emirates Divisional Senior Vice President, Cargo. "As an extremely agile and customer-focused business, we have been able to establish a new network and schedule for our cargo operations within a very short period of time, utilising lower deck capacity on our wide body Boeing 777 passenger aircraft which supplement the cargo capacity we offer on our freighter aircraft."
"Additionally, in order to consolidate operations and reduce costs in this new scenario, we have also temporarily shifted all our cargo handling operations to Dubai International Airport (DXB). Taken together we are making sure that we react more quickly to requests coming in from every part of the globe from our customers," Sultan added.