Maersk Air Cargo, the in-house airline of container shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, plans to inaugurate scheduled airfreight service in the US market this month from South Korea to Rockford International Airport in Illinois and Greenville-Spartanburg airport in South Carolina.
Maersk has also opened a freight station near Chicago O’Hare International Airport to support its aggressive growth plans for the air cargo business in the United States, part of a broader transformation into a one-source provider of logistics services.
On Wednesday, Maersk said it established a 61,000-square-foot cargo terminal near O’Hare to facilitate quicker shipment flows for customers at one of the nation’s largest international air cargo crossroads. The warehouse will also serve as a staging point for Maersk’s dedicated freighter hub at Rockford, about an hour’s drive west of O’Hare.
Chicago is strategically important for serving customers because of its central US location and the connection point between Asia and Europe. O’Hare ranks as the second-busiest air cargo gateway in the US, excluding the FedEx and UPS hubs in Tennessee and Kentucky. It benefits from proximity to the manufacturing belt, massive distribution infrastructure, and the fact that more than two-thirds of the American population can be reached from Chicago within an overnight truck drive.
Maersk Air Cargo will commence US service sometime this month with regular flights between Incheon airport in Korea and Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP), where Maersk also operates a terminal to support the forwarding business’ charter activity. As previously reported, the airline ran trial flights in August between South Korea and GSP.
Source: freightwaves.com
Photo source: Maersk.com