December 10 - Air Charter Service (ACS) has transported three fire trucks from Turkey to Iraq on two IL-76 freighter aircraft.
ACS explained that although the obvious choice to move the vehicles was an AN-124 freighter, the UK aircraft charter specialist suggested that the client design special ramps to allow the trucks to be loaded onto the IL-76 freighters, saving the customer around USD200,000.
Justin Lancaster, commercial director at ACS, commented: "The trucks are for the Iraqi government. We worked extremely closely with our customer and the operator over the course of more than a month to design the ramps."
The trucks, which weighed over 20 tonnes each, were transported to Turkey from the USA before being flown to Iraq. The bespoke ramp was dismantled and flown on board the aircraft in order to offload the trucks in Iraq.
