Heaviest Ever Project Freight Forwarding Piece for All Cargo Airline

SWITZERLAND – LUXEMBOURG – SOUTH KOREA – All freight air carrier Cargolux Airlines International S.A. has successfully transported its largest ever single piece with the transport of a 48-tonne-rotor intended to equip a generator in South Korea. A major project forwarding contract the shipment took twelve aircraft positions and required the dedicated attention of a full team of outsize specialists including the Cargolux dedicated Ground Engineering department as well as loadmasters, crane operators, truck drivers, handling agent LuxairCargo in Luxembourg, and handling agent Asiana at destination in Seoul.

The movement was undertaken on behalf of Swiss forwarding agent Panalpina and included three hours of crane-supported loading and consequent strapping, before flight CV7965 took off at 3:00 pm local time and landed at destination at 8:20 am local time on 13th September, after a 10h20’ non-stop flight. While it would have been easier to lash the rotor directly, the airline was happy to accommodate the customer’s preference for flying this huge shipment as one single piece, including the lid of the rotor. Okan Akpinar, Country Manager Switzerland, commented:

“Carrying heavy, dense cargo in closed packages such as containers or crates requires extraordinary efforts to ensure safe on-aircraft tie-down in forward, aft, left, right and up direction, as we can only secure the outer package and have no influence on what happens to the content when exposed to dynamic accelerations.

“Cargolux uses a self-develop IT application to plan and calculate the correct loading and tie-down of heavy shipments. The application takes into consideration all strap angles and the resulting aircraft attachment point capabilities to ensure a safe tie-down in full compliance to the applicable Boeing B747 freighter weight and balance manual.”

Photo: The rotor edges into the aircraft.