The company entered the scheduled cargo market on 1 April 2004, when the first AirBridgeCargo branded Boeing 747 made its inaugural commercial flight on route from Beijing to Luxembourg.[citation needed]
As of March 2022, AirBridgeCargo was forced to suspend all operations due to sanctions against Russia which rendered the entire fleet unusable.[1] In July 2022, the airline announced it would comply with sanctions and prepare to return 14 leased aircraft - which made up the majority of its fleet - to its lessors.[3]
In March 2023, it became known that the company planned to resume flights using Ilyushin Il-96 aircraft. Volga-Dnepr had begun searching for pilots with appropriate training.[4] However, by late 2023 these plans were abandoned, with two Il-96 formerly stored and already prepared for AirBridgeCargo being delivered to Sky Gates Airlines instead.[5]
Destinations
Prior to the suspension of all services, ABC had been present in Asia, Europe and North America. It operates a scheduled freighter route network of 37 destinations as of November 2019, focused on Europe, Asia and the United States.[2]
On September 11, 2012, an AirBridgeCargo Boeing 747-8F experienced a major engine malfunction that spread a significant amount of metallic debris on the runway. Like in a similar event during pre-flight taxi tests, the low pressure turbine shaft separated and moved the low pressure turbine (by design to avoid turbine overspeed) backwards braking on surrounding hardware.[6][vague][importance?]
On July 31, 2013, an AirBridgeCargo Boeing 747-8F experienced core engine icing that caused engine malfunctions and damage to three engines near Chengdu, China, while en route to Hong Kong; the aircraft landed safely at its destination. Boeing and General Electric would later work on software changes to mitigate the effects of core engine icing.[7][8][9][importance?]
