Volga-Dnepr Airlines Completes Project TO Support PNG LNG Project
In one of its biggest-ever air logistics projects, Volga-Dnepr Airlines has safely completed 88 cargo flights carrying over 6,000 tons of equipment in the space of 103 days to supply the ExxonMobil-operated PNG LNG Project.
The airline’s AN-124-100 aircraft operated all of the flights from Port Moresby Airport to the PNG LNG Project’s newly constructed Komo Airfield. The aircraft carried equipment for the PNG LNG Project’s Hides Gas Conditioning Plant in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
With each component averaging 60 tons in weight, including unique and oversized shipments requiring individual handling solutions, Volga-Dnepr’s engineers created a special loading process to carefully place the pieces of equipment into the cargo hold. Additional work was conducted by the airline to minimise the empty weight of the AN-124-100 aircraft, tooling and packaging equipment to maximise the opportunities offered by the freighter’s cargo capacity.
For these flights, special loading equipment was developed and manufactured by Volga-Dnepr and a special trailer was leased to simplify the loading and offloading of cargo, reducing the need to use cranes. This reduced the time required to load and offload cargo, which was an extremely important aspect of the entire project. Volga-Dnepr also developed solutions to ensure the appropriate maintenance of aircraft at Port Moresby airport during the 103 day project.
Dennis Gliznoutsa, Vice President, Development at Volga-Dnepr Airlines, said: “This project was complex and an interesting logistics challenge. Papua New Guinea is a country that has challenging climatic conditions, including highlands with frequent fog. We are proud to have successfully and safely completed this project by overcoming all of these difficulties and by once again demonstrating our expertise in the safe delivery of unique and outsize cargo. For us it was not only a commercial project but the opportunity to test ourselves again. Participation in this project has also helped us to strengthen our cooperation with regular customers and to acquire potential partners.”
Project background
Operating its first flight in support of the PNG LNG Project on May 3rd 2013, Volga-Dnepr Airlines successfully realised the outcome of several years of planning by specialists from Papua New Guinea, the United States, Australia and Japan, who were all working as part of an international team building the Project’s Hides Gas Conditioning Plant. Volga-Dnepr Airlines’ participation in the project dates back to 2008 and the airline’s air logistics knowledge and expertise was vital to development work that needed to take place in Papua New Guinea. One of the key events supported by Volga-Dnepr’s specialists over the past five years has been the building of a new airfield in Komo to handle AN-124-100 flights. Volga-Dnepr provided advice to help determine the optimal location and technical characteristics of the new airport’s runway, which is 3,200 metres in length and 45 metres wide. Volga-Dnepr won the tender to deliver supplies of gas equipment to the Komo site in 2012, based on its experience of over 20 years of delivering complex air logistics solutions for the movement of heavyweight and outsize cargo and its successful track record of serving clients in the oil and gas industry.
