Months of planning and work from players along the flower supply chain has culminated today on Valentine’s Day.

Whereas the big day itself lasts just 24 hours, Qatar Airways Cargo said customers and cargo teams began preparing months in advance. Ecuador and Colombia were two of the main markets for the carrier.

“This year, the Ecuadorian market had to deal with 24% less capacity into Europe, and around 16% less capacity into the U.S. market,” explains Ian Morgan, Qatar Airways Cargo vice president cargo Americas. This issue led to the addition of three more Quito-Miami (MIA) flights and four extra flights from Quito to Europe and onward to Doha, to complement the five regular weekly freighters out of Quito. The airline says Colombia has been well served with its two scheduled flights per week out of Bogotá.

Avianca Cargo also reports that it has has a strong Valentine’s season. The carrier transported more than 16,000 tonnes of flowers this year, mainly to the US. The figure is 15% more than 2021.

“For 2022, we created a robust strategy to strengthen our operation to provide high quality service. We reassigned the capacity of our freighters to increase the offer to the market and activated passenger aircraft dedicated for flower shipments. It has been the result of the great job done by our team of experts, the articulation with our clients and the different industry entities, that we managed to close the best season of our history,” says Gabriel Oliva, Avianca Cargo CEO.