American Airlines (AA) Cargo will add daily widebody San Juan – Philadelphia services to its network, providing capacity for goods including pharmaceuticals, mobile phones, medical instruments and aircraft parts.

The daily Airbus A330-200 flights between San Juan Luis Munoz Marin Airport and Philadelphia International Airport will supplement the two daily narrow-body services and provide connections to AA’s widebody network in North America, Asia and Europe.

American Airlines Cargo senior manager sales – Eastern division, Linda Dreffein says: “Bringing in a daily widebody for this route will give us the opportunity to offer customers more capacity to and from both of these high-demand locations.”

“Plus, it will hugely benefit us in our ongoing efforts to enhance and evolve our already world class cold-chain program.”

The Caribbean island accounts for 24 per cent of all pharmaceutical and medicine exports from the US according to the Puerto Rico Report (2016), and AA says the new flights will connect its recently enhanced cold chain infrastructure at San Juan with its facility at Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia facility is completely dedicated to healthcare products, and in addition to 24/7 active monitoring and full backup power generators, different temperature-control options include a 6,000 square foot room for Controlled Room Temperature shipments, a 3,000 square foot space maintaining a cold environment, a deep frozen area, and a zoned active container management area with powered charging stations for up to 30 electronically controlled containers.