What Baku and Changi Are Building Together

Silk Way West Airlines’ new multi-year cargo handling agreement with dnata at Singapore Changi Airport goes beyond a handling contract, strengthening a direct airfreight link between Baku and South-East Asia. The twice-weekly freighter operation will move more than 15,000 tons of cargo annually, including general freight, temperature-sensitive goods, aerospace components and industrial equipment. The partnership supports Silk Way West’s broader strategy of positioning Baku as a global air cargo hub connecting Asia and Europe. With links spanning China, Japan, South-East Asia, Europe and North America, the airline is building a network around the Middle Corridor and using Azerbaijan’s geographic position as a strategic alternative trade route. Singapore adds a critical eastern gateway to Silk Way West’s network, connecting Central Asia with one of the world’s largest logistics markets. Combined with dnata’s handling capabilities and the planned Alat cargo terminal joint venture, the deal strengthens Azerbaijan’s ambition to become a key hub for global airfreight flows. When Silk Way West Airlines signed a new multi-year cargo and freighter handling agreement with dnata at Singapore Changi Airport, the headlines largely wrote themselves. A well-known handler, a fast-growing freighter airline, a major hub. Tick, tick, tick. But spend a little more time with this deal and it starts to look like something bigger than a ground handling contract. It starts to look like the opening of a new chapter in how cargo moves between Central Asia and South-East Asia. Under the agreement, dnata will support Silk Way West’s twice-weekly freighter services at Changi, handling more than 15,000 tons of cargo annually. That covers the full spread, general freight, temperature-sensitive goods, oil and gas equipment, aviation parts, and aerospace cargo. It was awarded through a competitive tender, and builds on a relationship between the two companies that already spans Amsterdam, Dubai and multiple destinations in Iraq, with dnata managing more than 1,000 Silk Way flights a year across those markets combined. For dnata, the numbers in Singapore speak for themselves. The handler supports over 30 airline customers at Changi, processes around 250,000 tons of cargo each year, manages approximately 22,000 flights annually and employs more than 1,500 people at the airport. Globally, it operates at more than 90 airports in 16 countries, and in the 2025-2026 financial year its teams turned around over 888,000 aircraft and moved 3.2 million tons of cargo. Adding Silk Way West to that roster at one of Asia’s most important freight hubs is consistent, not surprising. Baku as the bridge Silk Way West is not your typical cargo airline. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Baku, it has spent the better part of a decade positioning Azerbaijan not just as a place of origin or destination, but as a transit point. A physical bridge between Asia and Europe that happens to sit at the crossroads of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, otherwise known as the Middle Corridor. That route, running from China across Kazakhstan, over the Caspian Sea, through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey and Europe, has gone from a geopolitical curiosity to one of the most talked-about trade corridors in the world, accelerated first by the war in Ukraine rerouting cargo away from Russia, and more recently by Hormuz disruptions pushing shippers away from Gulf Sea lanes. Azerbaijan sits right in the middle of all of it. And Silk Way West, as the largest cargo airline in the Caspian and Central Asian region, sits right in the middle of Azerbaijan. The Singapore route, then, is not just about handling volumes at Changi. It is about what Singapore represents at the other end of the chain, the entry point into South-East Asia’s vast and expanding trade ecosystem. Changi handled 2.08 million tons of airfreight in 2025, up 4.5 percent year on year, driven by semiconductors, AI-related supply chains, electric vehicles and cleantech. The airport connects over 100 airlines to approximately 100 countries. It is, by any measure, the freight gateway to the Asia-Pacific region. Silk Way West operating twice-weekly freighters into it means Baku now has a direct air link into that ecosystem, and through dnata’s handling capability, one that can scale. A network taking shape It helps to look at this alongside the other moves Silk Way West and its parent Silk Way Group have been making. In June 2024, the airline signed an MoU with China’s Henan Aviation Group to develop a dual-hub model connecting the Asia-Pacific region with Europe, America and Africa, using Zhengzhou and Baku as the twin anchors. In 2022, it signed an air cargo MoU with Nippon Express to strengthen its Japan market presence, having served Kansai and Narita since 2018 and 2021 respectively. And now Singapore, the commercial and logistics capital of South-East Asia, gets a direct link into Baku. The through-lin