SAS Cargo delivered a pair of giant pandas from Beijing to Copenhagen.
Cargo company SAS Cargo made an extraordinary flight on April 4: a pair of giant pandas Mao Sun and Xing Er were delivered from Beijing to Copenhagen on flight SK996.
The pandas were sent from the Chengdu Panda base to Denmark as a goodwill gesture by Chinese President Xi Jinping after the Queen of Denmark’s state visit to China in 2014. A joint research project on the conservation and breeding of giant pandas between China and Denmark will last 15 years.
Mao Sun and Xing Er traveled in two separate specially equipped boxes in the forward compartment of Flight SK996, which was given the special name Panda2.
The plane, specially designed with the names and images of pandas to commemorate this special event, arrived at the Wilhelm Lauritzen terminal of Copenhagen Airport, where media representatives were waiting along with a meeting committee including ministers, ambassadors and other VIPs. The pandas Mao Sun and Xing Er were safely delivered and loaded onto a truck that transported them to the Copenhagen Zoo.
Leif Rasmussen, President and CEO of SAS Cargo Group, said: “We are honored to be involved in such a prestigious transportation. We have a lot of experience in the delivery of animals and sensitive cargo, but it was, of course, a very special event, the transportation of such important persons on our aircraft.
Bengt Holst, Vice Director of the Copenhagen Zoo, said: “It was a fantastic trip that we planned and executed together with SAS Cargo. We could fully rely on their experience and team to ensure that Mao Sun and Xing Er received top class service during the air travel from Chengdu to Copenhagen.”
Denmark is already ready to receive Xing Er and Mao Sun. In addition to setting up a luxurious panda home, the Copenhagen Zoo started planting bamboo 15 years ago and also plans to import fresh bamboo shoots from China to provide enough food for the two giant pandas.
On April 11, Queen Margrethe of Denmark officially opened the panda house along with Crown Princess Mary, Chinese Ambassador to Denmark Deng Ying and Danish Minister of Culture Mette Bock. Many other distinguished guests, including Chinese officials and representatives of the Danish business community, attended this prestigious event. 5 thousand visitors came to the opening.
The Chengdu base is a research center for breeding giant pandas and other rare animals. The base is located in Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
The Chengdu Panda Center was founded in 1987. It started with the rescue of 6 giant pandas found in the wild. By 2008, 124 pandas had been born at the center. The Chengdu base is a world-class research and environmental education center.
SAS Cargo Group is the cargo company of SAS Scandinavian Airlines and operates the cargo facilities of Scandinavian Airlines. It was founded in 2001 and has subsidiaries in Denmark, Norway and Sweden and is headquartered at Copenhagen Airport (Kastrup, Denmark). SAS Cargo Group fleet includes Airbus A319, Airbus A320, Airbus A321, Airbus A330-300, Airbus A340-300, Boeing 737, CRJ900, Antonov An-26. SAS Cargo Group serves over 100 destinations. About half of them are in Scandinavia, and the rest are in Europe.
International air cargo transportation in Ukraine is successfully carried out by M&M Ukraine (head office in Kiev, subdivision in Boryspil and Odessa) in all promising and popular global destinations. “M&M Ukraine” provides high-quality and safe cargo transportation from China to Ukraine, from Ukraine to China, to Europe and to the USA.
Based on materials from www.sascargo.com and data from open sources.