VOLGA-DNEPR CARRIED 330 TONNES OF LIQUID CARGO

May 14, 2003 Ulyanovsk, Russia. - Volga-Dnepr Group has delivered special liquids for oil well drilling, operating three An-124-100 Ruslan flights from Ostend, Belgium to Baku, Azerbaijan. The deliveries were on behalf of British Petroleum.

The cargo was placed in transportation containers with special tanks for liquids. Five such containers, weighing 22 tonnes each, were loaded on each flight. Total weight of the cargo was 330 tonnes. Loading the tanks on the aircraft was with a special loading system for cargo weighing to up to 30 tonnes designed and patented by Volga-Dnepr technical specialists. Transporting large volume liquids by air imposes additional requirements to the delivery in terms of load monitoring and checking the volume of each tank filling.

As the leader of the international outsize air cargo market, Volga-Dnepr Group leads in providing logistics flights for the largest oil and gas companies of the world. Regular customers of oil industry clients include Exxon Mobile, British Petroleum and Calgary Overseas.

Under a strategic development plan Volga-Dnepr has turned today into an international group of companies with offices and subsidiaries all over the world, including Great Britain, USA, China, Ireland and the United Arab Emirates. Volga-Dnepr is aimed at promoting outsize air cargo transportation on the world market using the unique Antonov An-124-100 freighter.

The airline leads in market share of international super-heavy and outsize air cargo. Volga-Dnepr's fleet consists of nine An-124-100s with a tenth on order and five Yak-40s. The Group employs more than 1,200 people of twenty nationalities.