CZECH REPUBLIC – UZBEKISTAN – The shipping of living things is always problematical, if one can avoid the usual risk to such cargo of damage, which could potentially prove fatal, there are the twin terrors of keeping an organism in good health and dealing with the inevitable questions and restrictions which are imposed by Customs authorities etc. There is no question however that flora is usually easier to transport than fauna but perhaps not when the plants in question stand 7.5 metres high, and have to travel by air freight!
Twenty-eight cypress trees have been successfully delivered in the Uzbekistan capital, Tashkent, aboard one of Volga-Dnepr Airlines’ IL-76TD-90VD freighters. The trees were flown in from Brno in the Czech Republic for a landscape reconstruction project in Tashkent as part of the city’s preparations to host the 2016 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is a Eurasian economic, political and, to some extent, military group formed by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan and the next summit is particularly important as it may mean full inclusion for both India and Pakistan, currently‘observer states’. Several other countries hold this status or are dialogue partners with the SCO.
The cypress trees were grown at a nursery in Germany and transported to Brno for the flight to Uzbekistan. Volga-Dnepr operated the flight on behalf of the Russian logistics company Haltec-Avia. Vyacheslav Shakhov, Sales Executive of Volga-Dnepr Airlines, said:
“Our customers’ main priority was to transport the trees in the shortest possible timescale. We were able to support this with a cost efficient solution because we had one of our IL-76TD-90VD freighters positioned at Brno-Tuřany Airport.
“The trees were packed inside special protective boxes that were too tall to be loaded using the aircraft’s on board crane system so in order to avoid the costly rental of external cranes we brought our own special loading equipment from Leipzig to the Czech Republic, which enabled us to load the trees using the aircraft’s ramp and rail system and a forklift truck.”
Photo: One of the giant cases entering the aircraft hold.
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