September 2 - Expeditors International (UK) has coordinated the delivery of two 50-tonne pumps from Prestwick in Scotland to Incheon, South Korea using an AN-124 freighter.
"We had a 300-tonne crane mobilised at Prestwick airport for transfer of the equipment onto the aircraft's rail system for loading. The pumps were then pulled into the cargo hold with the aircraft's winch equipment," explained Michael Hoppe, country manager for project cargo in the UK and Ireland.
Due to a strict delivery schedule, the only choice was to charter an aircraft to complete the project on time, and the AN-124 was the best option for this move. Each pump measured 8.74 m x 4.12 m x 3.75 m, and both were stowed in the aircraft's hold.
"One of the challenges was to manoeuvre the pumps from the shipper's facility to Prestwick," said Hoppe. "Narrow streets and low bridges proved to be one of the challenges."
The AN-124 made two technical stops en route to Incheon to refuel - one at Moscow Domodedovo and a second at Krasnoyarsk.
"As time was of the essence we coordinated with the airline to change the crew on route. Due to this the total transit time was less than 21 hours including the tech stops for re-fuelling. With crew rest the flight would have taken up to two days. Therefore cargo arrived still in time for installation on site," Hoppe observed.
