Swiss WorldCargo is expanding its network in the summer flight schedule thanks to the capacity agreement with Edelweiss Air. The Switzerland based holiday airline is to start weekly direct connections from Zurich to the four new destinations of Beijing, Anchorage, Orlando and Beirut, as of June 2011. These new direct services strengthen the carrier’s position in some of the world’s major air cargo markets such as China, North America and the Middle East.

The Chinese metropolis of Beijing, a major export centre for electronics and chemicals, automobiles, machinery, metallurgy, textiles, garments, and household appliances, offers attractive business opportunities. In China, Swiss WorldCargo is already prominently represented with daily flights to Hong Kong and Shanghai.

The new weekly services to Anchorage and Orlando further raises the number of destinations served by Swiss WorldCargo in North America. The capitals of Alaska and Florida add to New York (JFK and Newark), Boston, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Montreal and Toronto. While in Alaska the demand of air cargo capacity mainly comes from the seafood export sector, in Florida, the fourth largest trade goods export market in the USA, it includes a wide array of industries.

The direct connection between Zurich and Beirut, “The Pearl of the Middle East” offers potential for the transportation of smaller and medium sized cargo shipments.“Like most of the routes we serve with the Edelweiss Air fleet, these new flights are small in volume terms, but require as much sophistication of service and reliability as any of the other specialist markets which we focus on, so that both Swiss WorldCargo and Edelweiss Air have benefited and will continue to enjoy new, attractive business opportunities,” says Oliver Evans, Chief Cargo Officer at SWISS.

In summer 2011, the connection between Zurich and Vancouver/Calgary (Canada) will also be reinstated. In addition, Swiss WorldCargo’s destinations offer will continue, of course, to include the entire portfolio of Edelweiss Air destinations in Kenya, Tanzania, Mexico, the Maldives, the Dominican Republic, Kosovo and Macedonia.