American Airlines (AA) has set a new record for how much it shipped in air freight in a single day.
Sunday (August 14th) was an important day in AA’s history, as it transported over 260,000kg of freight and mail from London Heathrow Airport (LHR).
Tristan Koch, American’s managing director of cargo sales – Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said: “There was high demand for space from all the origins which support our LHR flights, as well as general cargo from across the UK.”
AA flies to Chicago O’Hare (ORD), Dallas / Fort Worth (DFW), Los Angeles (LAX) and New York (JFK) from Heathrow, which are major freight links, as well as tourist destinations, in the USA.
On Sunday, 88.2 per cent of cargo positions were loaded, with AA almost reaching its full capacity when it comes to transporting goods. The achievement is especially noteworthy as AA also had a 99 per cent passenger load that day.
The record beat the previous busiest day for the London cargo team, which was in October 2015 when 256,668kg was shipped.
Mr Koch congratulated the operations team for their effort earlier this week, saying they “did an exemplary job in rising to the challenge, highlighting the great collaboration between the ramp and cargo departments”.
This had been a good year for American Airlines Group Inc, as it revealed positive results last month. It announced it had made a pre-tax profit of $1.5 billion (£1.14 billion) for the second quarter of 2016, and a net profit of $950 million or $1 billion excluding special charges during the three months.