CDB Aviation, a wholly owned Irish subsidiary of China Development Bank Financial Leasing, took delivery of the first freighter aircraft in the lessor’s history, an A330-300 passenger-to-freighter.

The aircraft was converted by Elbe Flugzeugwerke and is the first of two A330 P2Fs leased to the lessor’s launch customer, mas, a cargo carrier based in Mexico, which is expected to take delivery of the second aircraft in May.

“This is an important and historic day for CDB Aviation as we see the fruit of two years of intense work and collaboration, culminating in the delivery of our very first A330 P2F since we made the strategic entry into freighter aircraft leasing,” Patrick Hannigan, CEO of CDB Aviation, said. “We are grateful to the mas team for trusting CDB Aviation to be a partner in supporting their innovative fleet strategy and for being our very first A330P2F customer.”

“We feel honored that CDB Aviation trusted mas to be its first A330 P2F customer,” Luis Sierra, CEO of mas, said. “For us, operating the 300 variant will open amazing opportunities in regional markets where there is a need for highly reliable aircraft, providing enough volume. Working together on this process was amazing, and we are already looking at ways to do more business with the CDB Aviation team.”

“We are glad about the in-time, in-quality re-delivery of the first A330P2F to our customer CDB Aviation. With this first of many more to come conversions, we proved meeting customer expectations in these very challenging times,” Jordi Boto, CEO of Elbe Flugzeugwerke, said.