Emirates Skycargo, the cargo division of Emirates airline is seeing great potential for cargo movement on the carrier's newly-inaugurated Dubai-Los Angeles route.

Initially operating three times a week, Emirates will fly a Boeing 777-200LR on the route, offering up to 10 tonnes of cargo capacity in each direction.

The new service, which was launched on Sunday, will be welcomed by American fruit and vegetable exporters whose produce is expected to account for the majority of the cargo tonnage on the US outbound flight, along with US Postal Service mail.

Inbound to the US's second largest city, the main cargoes will be textiles from the Indian subcontinent, courier mail and equipment for the Hollywood film industry.

Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is the 12th busiest cargo airport in the world, handling 1.88 million tonnes of cargo last year. Dubai International Airport (DXB) finished one place behind LAX in the rankings at 13th, with 1.66m tonnes.

"Emirates SkyCargo is committed to the US, which has proved a very successful market for us. In June this year, we doubled our weekly capacity to Toledo, and upped our Houston flights in February from three times a week to daily," said Emirates Divisional Senior Vice-President Cargo Ram Menen.

"To ensure our customers receive the highest standard of Emirates service, we have built a team with more than four decades of experience in the LA air cargo market between them," he said.

Los Angeles, the manufacturing capital of the US, is the third US destination to which Emirates SkyCargo has launched services since June 2007 when it commenced a Boeing 747 freighter service to Toledo, Ohio.

"Going by the response we have had from our US customers, who have wanted a service linking the US west coast to Dubai for a long time, we are confident that LAX will emulate the successes of our other US stations," said the carrier's Los Angeles cargo manager, Siegfried Meyer, who has spent the last 23 years based at LAX, working for various international cargo carriers.

Emirates expanded its American network, commencing flights to Houston in December, while in just seven weeks from now, the carrier will launch services to the northern Californian city of San Francisco. Emirates started flying to New York, its first non-stop service to the Americas, in 2004.

Meanwhile, Emirates Skycargo is also planning to increase its cargo capacity from India to 2,647 tonnes by February 2009 following the carrier's increased number of flights to various destinations in India.

Cargo movement between Dubai and India is expected to gain momentum due to increased capacity to support the export of pharmaceuticals, vaccines, garments, chemicals, meat, fruits and vegetables to the Middle East, Africa, Europe and America.

The current cargo capacity of Emirates from Mumbai is 572 tonnes, which will be increased to 641 tonnes.

While cargo capacity from Delhi will be increased to 389 tonnes from the present 306 tonnes every week.

This comes following the airline's decision to introduce seven additional flights per week each to Mumbai and Delhi. The airline at present operates 28 flights from Mumbai and 18 flights from Delhi every week.

The cargo capacity of Emirates from Bangalore will be increased to 302 tonnes from the present 249 tonnes every week in the wake of introduction of five additional flights in its present 15 weekly flights.

The increase is expected to provide significant thrust to goods movement from Bangalore which exports electronic hardware, engineering goods, chemicals and pharmaceuticals and readymade garments.