SAS Cargo has appointed Allied Aviation as its General Sales and Services Agent (GSSA) for India, effective 1 October, backing five weekly services between Mumbai and Copenhagen.

The Scandinavian carrier will fly the Copenhagen–Mumbai route with Airbus A330 aircraft. Allied Aviation takes charge of cargo sales, supervision and revenue optimisation across the Indian market.

For Indian shippers, the arrangement opens direct belly capacity into Copenhagen, with onward connections across SAS Cargo's network in Scandinavia and beyond. That matters most for time-sensitive and high-value traffic: Allied Aviation plans to build the Mumbai services around a broad commodity mix including pharmaceuticals, perishables, engineering goods and machinery, garments and ecommerce shipments.

"This is an important addition to our airline portfolio, giving Indian exporters direct capacity into Copenhagen and access to SAS Cargo's wider network across Scandinavia and beyond," said Kritika Seth, executive director at Allied Aviation.

Sales reach across nine cities

Allied Aviation will work the mandate through an India-wide footprint, with offices in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. That spread gives SAS Cargo immediate commercial coverage in the country's main airfreight producing regions — the pharmaceutical corridors of Gujarat and Hyderabad, the garment and engineering clusters feeding Chennai and Kolkata, and the ecommerce hubs around Delhi and Mumbai.

"Our teams have longstanding connections with forwarders across India and will use that experience to build demand for the new Mumbai services and support SAS Cargo as it develops its presence in the Indian cargo market," said Seth.

What it means for forwarders

For Indian forwarders, the deal adds a direct Scandinavia option to a market long dominated by routings through Gulf and European hubs such as Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Dubai. Direct Copenhagen capacity typically cuts transit times and reduces transfer risk for pharma and perishables, both of which feature prominently in Allied Aviation's target mix.

The GSSA structure also signals SAS Cargo's approach to India: building load factors and revenue through an established local sales organisation rather than stationing its own commercial staff. For Allied Aviation, the mandate adds a European network carrier to a portfolio it already describes as broad.

The appointment takes effect 1 October, meaning the first weeks of the contract will show how quickly Allied Aviation's forwarder relationships convert India's export demand — particularly pharma out of Mumbai and Ahmedabad — into sustained loads on the five weekly A330 rotations.