Air Incheon to study widebody merchantman orders after Asiana load acquire – Information Today Online

By Lisa Barrington

SEOUL (Reuters) – Air Incheon, ordered to embellish South Korea’s second-biggest transport traveler erst a care to acquire Asiana Airlines’ load organisation is finalised, module study both Boeing and Airbus freighters to change the widebody fleet, its CEO said.

The EU rivalry controller terminal period authorised Air Incheon, a diminutive cargo-only traveler with quaternary Boeing 737s, as the desirable bidder to acquire Asiana’s load business, as a information of support for it to merge with Asiatic Air Lines.

The acquire for an covert assets would designate Asiana’s fleet, staff, customers and reciprocation rights to Air Incheon, which is supported at Incheon airport, South Korea’s important planetary gateway and the world’s fifth-busiest load airport. Asiana operates 11 Boeing 767 and 747 freighters to 25 cities in 12 countries.

The acquisition module allow the rights to control to field Asiatic goods hubs aforementioned Shanghai, Kwangchow and Hong Kong, and to the U.S., Air Incheon CEO discoverer Seunghwan Lee told Reuters in an discourse this week.

The intend is to acquire into a orbicular charter and wet-lease bourgeois kinda than commerce expanse direct to logistics firms, he added.

Lee plans to gradually update Asiana’s old widebody fleet, a duty complicated by a orbicular bomb insufficiency and suspended U.S. support for Boeing 777-300ER passenger-to-freighter conversions.

“Air Incheon crapper control the underway Asiana fast at diminutive fivesome or heptad years,” he said.

Lee is conversation to lessors and manufacturers most regenerate Boeing 777-300ERs, Boeing 777 works freighters, or Airbus A350 freighters, which the dweller planemaker expects to start assist in 2026.

The Asiana Pilot Union (APU) has said it is sorry with Air Incheon as desirable bidder, locution it is likewise diminutive to contend with Asiatic Air.

The APU, which also opposes Asiatic Air acquire Asiana, said more than 100 Asiana load pilots had, as of Thursday, submitted letters indicating they module depart if transferred.

Lee said Air Incheon needs the cooperation and undergo of Asiana body and module indorse the aforementioned salary and kindred benefits.

Korean Air had obtained a naif reddened from 13 of 14 rivalry polity for the Asiana care and CEO director Cho has said he anticipates the test U.S. selection by the modify of October.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Additional news by author Lee; Editing by Jamie Freed)