National carrier Air India, which last week launched a dedicated cargo service, has plans to fly to China, Japan and USA later this year.
The network will be expanded to fly to these destinations once the airline acquires more aircraft.
Five Boeing 737-200s under Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Indian, will be converted into cargo plane. They will join the Air India  fleet early next year.
Meanwhile, after it launched the cargo operation with one Airbus A310, AI is to get the second cargo-converted aircraft by end of July. The second  cargo plane will fly on the same route as the first: Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Daman (Saudi Arabia), Frankfurt, and Paris.
“The response we are getting for the first cargo aircraft has been encouraging both from India as well as into India. We are almost going full capacity of 34 tonne,” B Senthil Kumar, AI’s deputy commercial director (cargo) told Deccan Herald.
Flagging off the first cargo flight last week in Mumbai, civil aviation minister Praful Patel said, “If UBS and Fedex can have 700 cargo aircraft each, why cannot India have 500 freighters in the next 10 years?”
Mr Patel said Nagpur would be India’s main cargo hub and the government was considering raising the foreign investment limit in cargo airlines to 74 per cent of the equity.