OMAN Air, the national carrier of the Sultanate of Oman, has developed a sea-air cargo corridor with the Port of Salalah to create a 16-day round trip from Hong Kong to Frankfurt, Munich, Milan or Paris by 48 hours and reduce costs.

    Salalah, the largest port on the Arabian Peninsula, handles 3.5 million TEU annually of more than 36 weekly connections to and from Europe and Asia along with 45 weekly vessel connections to and from regional ports.

    It's strategic position is being utilised by carriers like Oman Air through its Sea-Air product, said its chief executive officer Peter Ford.

     "We are happy to be able to work with Oman Air to offer transit times to Frankfurt and Milan that are lower than the current port routing in the region and offer significant value to customers in terms of product positioning and net working capital," said Mr Ford.

    Said Oman Air chief commercial officer Abdulrazaq Alraisi: "Now that the product has taken off, we look forward to adding more points of origin and more destinations to complement our existing network to the services we already provide at the Port of Salalah and at Salalah Airport."

    Despite global cargo weakness Oman Air has seen an increase of revenues of 238 per cent in 2010 from volumes of 26,800 tons.

(Source:http://www.shippingonline.cn/news/newsList.asp?classname=News)