MANILA, Philippines — UPS has completed a series of air lane enhancements that have dramatically improved service for customers throughout Asia.

The company has completed improvements to more than 100 intra-Asia lane pairs since it opened the Shenzhen hub last May.

The enhancements include faster transit times on key lanes between India and the rest of Asia and between South Korea and other Asian destinations.

Also launching next month will be a direct weekly flight from Guam to Hong Kong, which in turn connects that U.S. territory to the rest of the world.

"The Shenzhen Asia Pacific hub has enabled us to strengthen our entire intra-Asia network," said Derek Woodward, president of UPS's Asia Pacific Region.

"Since we relocated our intra-Asia hub to Shenzhen, we have operated more than 5,000 flights to and from this hub. We also have added significant capacity and service improvements to meet the growing needs of businesses to move intra-Asia express and freight volume."

During its first year of operation, the Shenzhen hub made possible multiple service enhancements for customers in Asia Pacific.

Beijing customers now benefit from improved time-in-transit and later cut-off times to cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, Tokyo & Osaka.

The key Indian cities of New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore have seen reduced time-in-transit to destinations like Australia, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Vietnam.

And shipments bound from Seoul to major cities like Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Singapore, and Tokyo now benefit from later cut-off times.

"The biggest winners here are our customers. Their goods either arrive earlier or they can enjoy later pick-up times to accommodate last-minute orders," Woodward added.

"The new Guam flight will offer service to the express package, military and forwarder communities and provide capacity for the burgeoning Asia export market." he continued.

UPS will initiate the Guam service using its largest aircraft, the B747-400 freighter, which offers customers 258,000 pounds of payload capacity and is well suited for carrying both small packages and heavy freight required by Guam's shipping and logistics community.

The addition of Guam to the UPS Asia-Pacific portfolio is the latest step in the company's aggressive expansion in that part of the world.

Rapid growth in the UPS customer base there recently led the company to add new direct flights between Hong Kong and its European hub in Cologne, Germany, as well as frequencies into Incheon, South Korea, and Tokyo's Narita International Airport.