Volga-Dnepr Airlines Carries an Airframe for British Aerospace

Ulyanovsk, 22 October 2001. Volga-Dnepr Airlines operated a flight to move an airframe built by British Aerospace. The 33-meter fuselage was loaded onto an AN-124-100 in Kinloss, Scotland and airlifted to Manchester where BAe has one of its manufacturing facilities.

Such operations require the airline's office of technical director to design special platforms that would accomodate the airplane fuselage in flight. Unique capabilities of the AN-124-100 and highly skilled staff ensure that such loading/unloading operations (which sometimes involve dealing with clearances between the load and cargo hold walls that are measured in millimeters) take a few minutes, with no need for additional ground equipment since the on-board loading system is capable to accomodate one-piece loads up to 120,000 kg.

This operation is another step in the long-standing cooperation with British Aerospace, with seven fuselages already airlifted over the last three years.

Volga-Dnepr Airlines is the world's leader in air transportation of outsized and heavy cargoes using the AN-124-100 freighter. The 2000 statistics indicate that aerospace equipment accounted for over 30% of the total cargo carried. Volga-Dnepr's major customers include such aerospace giants as Lockheed Martin, Boeing Satellite Systems, Khrunichev Space Systems Center, Airbus Industrie, etc.

For further information and photo and video materials,

please contact Volga-Dnepr's PR Department at:

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E-mail: pr@vda.ru