SAS Cargo has handed Allied Aviation the General Sales and Services Agent (GSSA) mandate for India as it prepares to launch five weekly Airbus A330 flights between Mumbai and Copenhagen from 1 October 2026.

The appointment puts Allied in charge of cargo sales, supervision and revenue optimisation across India for the new route. For SAS Cargo, the deal is a route into the Indian freight market without building its own local sales infrastructure; for Allied, it adds a European carrier to a portfolio that already spans airline partnerships in the region.

"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, Allied Aviation.

Commodity focus

Allied is targeting high-value pharmaceuticals, perishables, engineering goods and machinery, garments and e-commerce shipments on the Mumbai services. The commodity mix tracks the strengths of India's west-coast export base: pharma out of Mumbai and Hyderabad, garment traffic feeding the region's manufacturing belt and fast-growing e-commerce volumes heading to Europe.

Five weekly A330 frequencies give the route meaningful belly capacity into a Scandinavian hub that has had limited direct Indian connections. Forwarders booking Indian-origin cargo into northern Europe gain a Copenhagen gateway option alongside the established Gulf and Frankfurt/Amsterdam routings, with SAS Cargo's network offering onward reach across Scandinavia.

"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.

National sales reach

Allied will sell the capacity through a nine-station network covering Mumbai (BOM), Ahmedabad (AMD), Hyderabad (HYD), Kolkata (CCU), Delhi (DEL), Chennai (MAA), Bengaluru (BLR), Kochi (COK) and Thuvananthapuram — giving the route nationwide sales coverage rather than dependence on the Mumbai catchment alone.

The breadth matters commercially. A GSSA model lives or dies on the agent's ability to consolidate demand from multiple markets, and India's air cargo growth is increasingly driven by secondary stations such as Ahmedabad, Kochi and Hyderabad rather than the metro gateways alone.

The launch also lands at a moment when Europe-bound capacity from India is under pressure from surging e-commerce and pharma exports, strengthening the revenue case for a new direct Scandinavian link.

If Allied can convert its forwarder relationships into sustained load factors from October, SAS Cargo will have a template for deepening its Indian presence — and rival European carriers will face one more competitor for India–Europe belly cargo.