Bollore Logistics transports of four giant compressors by air charter 31 October 2017

Bolloré Logistics North China handled an important Oil & Gas shipment for a Chinese Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) company to charter aircrafts to transport four lots of compressors and valve skids with a total combined weight of more than 400 tons.

The four lots had to be airlifted from Calgary airport (YYC) to Mary airport (MYP) in Turkmenistan. The Charter Department based in Bolloré Logistics Headquarters in Puteaux, France, selected the Antonov aircraft AN124-100 to complete this project. Bolloré Logistics’ Charter Director and Engineers together with Antonov Engineers only had four weeks to plan operations and carefully take all technical constraints and parameters into account.

The heaviest piece of equipment was 81.5 tons with dimensions 1,340 x 530 x 416cm. The height proved to be a significant challenge as the clearance was only a few millimetres but the solutions provided by Bolloré Logistics and Antonov allowed the customer to avoid additional disassembly and re-assembly of the scrubbers on site by loading the compressors with the scrubbers fully assembled.

The first flight departed on August 17th with a payload reaching the maximum safely possible on the aircraft (total 115 tons plus 6.7 tons of ramps and loading equipment). Because of the payload, the aircraft had to refuel in Winnipeg, Goose Bay, Keflavik, Leipzig and Esenboga to reach Mary. The fourth and last flight landed in Mary and was discharged on September 17th. All four charters were successfully handled by Bolloré Logistics and Antonov safely, on time and within budget.

The control tower for this project was Bolloré Logistics North China. They managed to satisfy all of the customer's requests, engineering, technical and commercial challenges by relying on support from Bolloré Logistics Calgary for all land operations from the factory to Calgary airport and safe lifting of the compressors on the aircrafts' ramps.