Flower charters keeps Emirates SkyCargo busy in February

Feb 11, 2019: Emirates SkyCargo has operated a total of nine freighter flights dedicated for flowers, spanning five continents, to meet additional demand ahead of Valentine's Day.

The Dubai based carrier in its official release to meet the demand for flowers, major flower producing nations around the world including Kenya and Ecuador harvest and air-freight additional quantities of roses to important global centres of flower distribution such as the Aalsmeer market in the Netherlands and directly to customers around the world.

Every year, millions of roses are gifted worldwide on Valentine's Day resulting in a spike in demand for flowers in early February, said the carrier through a statement in its official release.

The freight division of Emirates operates daily scheduled freighter flights to Nairobi and four weekly freighters to Quito around the year to uplift flowers that are then flown to destinations across its network.

The spokesperson said: "The air cargo carrier operated its first direct freighter flight carrying flowers from Nairobi directly to Sydney and from Quito directly to Los Angeles."

The airline's 777 freighter is capable of transporting up to 100 tonnes of cargo and thus it translates into the carrier flying close to 900 tonnes of roses over and above the around 4000 tonnes transported monthly.

Emirates SkyCargo carried over 50,000 tonnes of flowers across the world in 2018. A majority of the flowers, over 27,000 tonnes, originated in Kenya. This is estimated to be around 15 percent of the overall flower exports from the nation.

In January 2019, the carrier uplifted over 2,200 tonnes of flowers from Nairobi. During the same time, Emirates SkyCargo flew over 1,200 tonnes of flowers from Ecuador to Amsterdam.

Emirates SkyCargo also transports flowers in the belly hold of its passenger aircraft from other markets such as India, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia.