Cargolux delivers 48-tonne rotor to South Korea
27 / 02 / 2015
CARGOLUX has delivered this 48-tonne rotor from Switzerland to South Korea, writes Thelma Etim, deputy editor.
The huge shipment, which took three hours to load and strap, is the heaviest piece the European all-cargo carrier has ever uplifted out of Switzerland, says a company statement.
It took 12 pallet positions and required a team of outsize specialists, including Cargolux’s dedicated ground engineering department, as well as loadmasters, crane operators, truck drivers, handling agent LuxairCARGO in Luxembourg and handling agent Asiana at its Seoul destination.
“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 directions, as we can only secure the outer package and have no influence on what happens to the content when exposed to dynamic accelerations,” advises Okan Akpinar, the airline’s country manager in Switzerland.
“Cargolux uses a self-developed 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 B747 freighter weight and balance manual,” he adds.
The Luxembourg-based cargo carrier has a long history of transporting outsize and heavy shipments and, as such, has positioned itself as an outsize specialist – in addition to its day-to-day general freight, consolidation business.
Its freighters can carry heavy weights such as the rotor, provided the aircraft floor limits can be met. Pieces exceeding a length of 20 metres are also regularly accommodated aboard Cargolux’s ‘planes, adds the statement.
Other heavy cargo transported includes flight simulators, aircraft engines, mill wheels, escalators for shopping malls, heavy machinery, vehicles, oil drilling equipment, rotors, helicopters, satellites, ships’ spares and entire trucks.
