Korean Air Cargo has increased capacity on a South America Boeing 777F route to three times a week, starting 23 August.
The link will depart from Seoul’s Incheon International Airport (ICN) and before calls in Anchorage, Miami, Sao Paulo, Santiago, Lima and Los Angeles, before returning to ICN.
Meanwhile, Korean Air Cargo’s parent carrier Korean Air is to reduce belly capacity into Japan, due to reduced demand and tensions between South Korea-Japan.
Tensions between South Korea and Japan have been mounting over trade and intelligence disagreements since early July. On 2 August, Japan removed South Korea from their list of preferred trade partners, alleging South Korea had broken protocol and illegally shared chemical imports with North Korea.
Korean Air will suspend the Busan-Osaka route (14 flights a week) from 16 September, as well as Jeju-Narita (three flights a week) and Jeju-Osaka (four flights a week) from 1 November.
The airline will also temporarily suspend some of its other routes. Incheon-Komatsu (three flights a week) and Incheon-Kagoshima (three flights a week) will be suspended from 29 September to 16 November, and Incheon-Asahikawa (five flights a week) will be suspended from 29 September to 26 October.
The number of flights on the Incheon-Osaka/Fukuoka routes, Incheon-Okinawa and Busan-Narita/Fukuoka belly routes will also be cut. Korean Air plans to strengthen its route competitiveness by focusing more on other markets, such as Southeast Asia, Oceania, and China in the winter season.
The airline will also launch a new daily route to Clark, Philippines, starting from 27 October and add four more operations a week for Incheon-Chiang Mai/Bali, and increase the frequency of the Incheon-Brisbane route from five to seven flights a week.
Korean Air is also planning to expand its network to China with the launch of new direct services. The airline plans to start direct flights from Incheon to Zhangjiajie and Hangzhou three times a week each, and Incheon-Nanjing four times a week. The service between Incheon and Beijing will be now be operated 17 times a week, up from the previous 14 a week.
