Italy’s Poste Air Cargo debuts scheduled int’l ops

Poste Air Cargo (M4, Rome Fiumicino) launched its first scheduled international cargo route, from Rome Fiumicino to Tel Aviv Ben Gurion, on April 10, 2021. The Italian cargo specialist, owned by the national postal operator Poste Italiane, said it would operate the route weekly to add more capacity to compensate for the lack of bellyhold capacity between Italy and Israel. It will use B737-400(F) aircraft, the first flight of which was operated by EI-GUA (msn 28888), Flightradar24 ADS-B data shows. Poste Air Cargo deploys its in-house fleet of two ATR72-500(F)s and five B737-400(F)s on domestic overnight mail and cargo services mostly out of its main hub at Brescia airport. It has secondary bases at Cagliari and Rome Fiumicino. The carrier also wet-leases a B737-300(F) from KlasJet, a B737-400(F) from Bluebird Nordic, and an ATR72-200(F) from RAF-Avia. According to the ch-aviation schedules module, there are currently no scheduled passenger or cargo flights between Italy and Israel. However, El Al Israel Airlines plans to restart scheduled operations to Fiumicino, Milan Malpensa, and Venice Marco Polo on May 2, 2021.