OREANDA-NEWS. DUBAI, U.A.E.,13th August: Emirates SkyCargo, the freight division of Emirates, has boosted its capacity to America's third largest city, Chicago, with the start of daily non-stop flights.

The Dubai-Chicago non-stop service, launched last week and operated by a Boeing 777-200LR, offers nearly 120 tons of belly-hold cargo capacity a week each way, which will further stimulate a growing demand for Emirates SkyCargo services to and from Chicago, particularly from the Middle East, India, Asia, the Far East and Australia.

The new daily belly-hold capacity supplements the current twice weekly freighter service to Chicago from Dubai, which was launched in March 2013. The first of the weekly freighter flights, which departs Dubai on a Thursday, connects with Chicago via Copenhagen and Amsterdam, while the second weekly flight on a Sunday has a stop in Copenhagen.

Cargo being offloaded from Emirates' Boeing 777-200LR at Chicago's at O'Hare International Airport

“As a city with one of the highest GDPs in the United States, and it being home to some of the world's largest and best known companies, makes Chicago and its greater area, a very important commercial and economic hub. Before we started freighter services to the city, it was already a growing feeder market for our cargo services from New York," said Duncan Watson, Emirates Vice President, Cargo Commercial Southern Africa and Americas.

“Since then we have had a steady increase in the tonnage of cargo moved into and out of Chicago. For example in 2009, we carried 4900 tons of cargo from Chicago via New York, whereas for the first six months of this year we have already carried nearly the same amount. On the imports side, we carried just 190 tons in 2009, which has grown to over 2000 tons in the same six month period. The additional capacity on new daily Chicago flight will further stimulate demand for our cargo services to Dubai and onto our worldwide network," he added.

The top markets to which Emirates SkyCargo carries Chicago's exports include the UAE, Australia, India and Saudi Arabia, while its imports are mainly from Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, India and the Scandinavian markets.

Chicago's imports and exports are diverse and range from agricultural goods, to mobile phones, fresh food, fashion goods and pharmaceuticals. Amongst its key imports are hi-tech products such as computer parts and telecommunications products, machinery components, land vehicles and parts, garments, personal household goods, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Its main exports are raw materials and industrial consumables, machinery components, capital equipment, fashion goods, frozen and fresh foods.

Emirates SkyCargo currently serves 10 destinations in the United States. These are: New York, Washington D.C., Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, Houston, Atlanta and Chicago, the latter three of which are also freighter destinations.

Emirates flight EK235 departs Dubai International Airport daily at 0945hrs and lands in Chicago at 1525hrs. The return flight, EK236, departs Chicago at 2035hrs and arrives in Dubai at 1910hrs the next day.

Emirates SkyCargo has a fleet of 13 freighters, 10 Boeing 777Fs and two Boeing 747-400ERFs, which serve more than 50 destinations around the world from its freighter hub at Dubai World Central's Al Maktoum International Airport.