Germany's state subsidy cut 'won't push rail freight onto the roads'
Concerns of a major modal shift from rail to road after the German government reduced ...
By Alex Lennane
The German media has unearthed more information concerning the Leipzig-based airline Volga-Dnepr Group intends to launch.
Last week, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung noted that the application for a German AOC is being made under the name Value Cargo Logistics, a company formed five years ago, and, since 2016, headed by the Ruslan Salis vice president and former Leipzig Halle airport chief, Dierk Nather.
According to CargoForwarder, which has revealed much of the detail in this thorough article, Volga-Dnepr then applied for an AOC for the airline to German regulator Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA). The LBA is not forthcoming with information however, and this could not be confirmed.
The LBA told The Loadstar it was not able to publish or share information from the German Civil Aircraft Register, owing to a regulation which “simply forbids to provide [that information] to private persons or organisations “
The CF article speculates that delays could be due to wrangling from Lufthansa, which was also reported to have attempted to make life hard for another former German freighter airline, Air Cargo Germany, which was 49% owned by Volga-Dnepr.
However, as CF notes, there is not a great deal Lufthansa or anyone else can do, as Volga-Dnepr owners Alexei Isaikin and Vladimir Shcherbakov are both EU citizens.
With little activity on the AOC, Vogla-Dnepr decided to put industry veteran Uli Ogiermann on the case – which now must be resolved by the start of next year when Volga-Dnepr’s AN-124 stops operating for NATO.
Questions remain, however, over Antonov’s willingness to help certify the aircraft for Germany; and whether Volga-Dnepr could afford to modernise the aircraft in Germany and therefore not be reliant on Antonov.
Volga-Dnepr, meanwhile, has remained virtually silent on the issue. It told MZ that, in the long term, depending on the market situation and regulation, it wants to establish airlines in different regions, revealing only that “Leipzig is an option”.
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