In fact our project was to establish an office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Because we could see all the CIS countries' aircrafts land and operate there. Then I saw Baku and brought the idea to our head office that Baku would be more profitable for us and they agreed on it. 130 tons of cargo comes in Baku airport and the same can go out. The reason of our opening new offices in the region is that on the way to Far East our aircrafts should have some technical call for refuel. Previously the main route to Far East was Dubai-Abu Dhabi-Sharja, but now we use Baku more. By using Baku route we are gaining more than 2 hours to such destinations like Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, Komatsu in Japan. In August 2001 we started our first inauguration flight. Then we were bringing only about 25 tones of cargo per week. Now we are bringing 225 tons per week. And we are planning to increase the amount of cargoes. Perhaps the growth is not going to be so big but the graphic is still upwards. Though establishing a hub in Baku was a little bit tough at the beginning.
One of the main principles of Cargolux is try never to get in contact with producers. Our main customers have been forwarders for 33 years.

What makes up the major part of the cargo you bring in Baku?

The main part of it is oil equipment, consumer goods and drilling equipment because the technology grows paralelly with the oil business.

The fuel was our main task here and another thing is that I'm really more than happy with the conditions at the airport. At the beginning it was in a very bad condition. But soon it was reconstructed and within 7 months the construction of the 2nd category runway was completed which is a big achievement. They also renewed a lot of things in the navigation side, bought new computers and it has been already 2 months that they started building a cargo village and the speed of building process is very fast. As a cargo transportation company we are really happy to see all those changes.
They bought new aircrafts and the most important is that when they get money from the airlines they immediately invest in the airport or their own airline. They are really creating conditions to operate here.

Do you also cooperate with AZAL?

One of the reasons of our being here so successful is our very good cooperation with Azerbaijan Airlines. We decided to make a good commercial agreement with the Azerbaijan Airlines. We make exchange of services. Azerbaijan Airlines takes our cargo abroad and we bring a little cargo to AZAL as well. We are bringing cargo to AZAL from Europe, US, Japan and they are flying with our cargo to Tbilisi, Aktau, Alma-Ata, Tashkent, Ashghabad… all the CIS countries.
We both make our profits from the agreement. We can say that our project consisting of creating a hub has been realized.

What are the main routes you are currently flying and what is Azerbaijan's share in it?

Cargolux aircrafts make 32 flights on Dubai-Abu Dhabi-Sharji route and now we've brought 15 of them to Azerbaijan.
The far flights from Luxemburg are made through Luxemburg-Baku-Shanghai and Shanghai-Bangkok-Baku-Luxemburg on the way back. We also make flights to New-York and other parts of the world.

You intend to increase your presence on the Asian market?

We already increased a lot in 2003. We were flying 3 times to Shanghai now we are flying 6 times per week. We are actually flying combined with the Chinese airlines.We are still flying to Japan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong-Kong, Thailand and so on.
We have got our offices there. We are planning to increase the flights after March 2-3, 2004.