Titans of the air: Moving outsize and heavy cargo charters

Technical giants

Moving outsize cargo requires highly technical knowledge; the cargo often has many moving parts, and comes with a big price tag and the risk of potential damage, if incorrectly handled. Thus, expert knowledge can be critical to a successful shipment.

“If you want to carry a huge 60-tonne turbine, with perhaps a few centimeters clearance to the roof of the aircraft cabin, the item is probably going to be too dense and heavy to fit on an aircraft safely, so a cradle will need to be designed and built to spread the weight across the cargo compartment,” van Der Stichele said.

The loading of an outsize shipment can often include the use of additional equipment at both the origin and destination airports, such as cranes to transfer the cargo from a flatbed truck to the aircraft-loading ramp, and vice versa. While cranes may be necessary to move massive objects, experts in the field seem to agree that the biggest and heaviest pieces are not always as challenging as those that are fragile or uniquely shaped.

“Some of the hardest may be aerospace industry items that are very dense, but extremely sensitive to movements, like aircraft engines,” said van Der Stichele. “Each engine can be worth between US$20 million to $35 million and any rough handling, such as vibration in flight or transit, can later cause a fault with an engine and engine failure.”

Such freight requires specialist trucking with air-ride suspension vehicles and suspension engine stands, van Der Stichele explained. Tie-down procedures must also be adhered to for ground and air transit; if not, the consequential damage can be substantial and costly. Preparation for these shipments can widely vary depending on the object and its complexity, but generally, the minimum time required to prepare a flight for cargo of outsize nature is ideally about a week, experts said, as anything shorter can be dangerous in terms of guaranteeing loadability.

In addition to ensuring safe and secure procedures, experts in outsize cargo shipments often leverage creative thinking to cut down on costs. This can be useful for certain larger items that can be rearranged to fit inside a smaller aircraft, allowing clients to avoid the costly pricing for robust Russian heavy hitter aircraft. Helicopter movement is one example of this, according to Dan Morgan Evans, group cargo director at Air Charter Services.

“Sometimes detaching rotary at the top will make a big difference on your aircraft you can pack it on; if you can dismantle a helicopter as much as possible, then you can load it on a much smaller aircraft which will reduce the cost quite a lot,” Morgan Evans said.

Also, while smaller specialist freighters, like the An-74 and An-12, may have less achievable payload, they are capable of taking smaller, yet more? difficult, loads to support energy industries with tooling equipment, van Der Stichele said. These smaller aircraft also provide a further advantage due to their capabilities of operating to and from smaller airports with shorter runways. This allows for more options in planning the end-to-end logistics of a shipment and may potentially reduce the distance required for ground transport of the item to its final destination.