ATSG's subsidiary, Air Transport International (ATI), is scheduled to begin providing wide-body ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance) service for Qantas Freight between Australia and New Zealand under a two-year agreement starting June 15th.
ATI's Boeing 767-200-SF will enable Qantas Freight to maintain overnight wide-body freight service and capacity four days a week between Sydney, Auckland, and Christchurch. The ATI aircraft also will be available for charter work and weekend rotations as needed.
Another ATSG subsidiary, ABX Air, is providing air charter service six days a week for DHL affililate, European Air Transport, between Brussels in Belgium, and Lagos in Nigeria. Operations began last month.
Initially, ABX Air will operate the Brussels-Lagos run through September 2009.
The agreement is in addition to ABX Air's ACMI services for DHL in the US.
Both ABX Air and Airborne Maintenance & Engineering Services (AMES) personnel will maintain the aircraft in Brussels and in Lagos.
In related news, ABX Air has completed an agreement with DHL regarding leases of certain ABX Air aircraft.
The agreement, which is further to an MoU that DHL and ABX Air executed in March 2009, grants DHL options to lease from ABX Air, or an affiliate, up to four Boeing 767-200SF aircraft under favourable rates, and for terms beginning August 15, 2010, and continuing through 2015.
In exchange, DHL has agreed to assume financial responsibility, retroactive to January 31, 2009, for ABX Air's obligations under capital leases on five Boeing 767-200PC aircraft currently dedicated to DHL's US network.
As at March 31, 2009, ATSG's balance sheet reflected $50.2 million of debt and $21.5 million of net book value related to those aircraft capital leases.
The agreement calls for ABX Air to grant to DHL up to $10 million of credit against future rent obligations for the four 767-200SFs. If DHL elects not to exercise its options for any of the four 767-200SFs, ABX Air would pay DHL $2.5 million for each such option that DHL elects to forego.
ABX Air is expected to continue to operate some or all of the five leased 767-200PCs as required under the current ACMI Agreement between the companies. The agreement does not stipulate whether ABX Air would continue to operate any of the four 767-200SF aircraft that DHL may opt to lease.
