The Milan and Cologne offices of Air Partner recently joined forces to support the Giro d’Italia, Italy’s most prestigious bike race. The event, which is celebrating its 99th edition this year, is organised by RCS Sport and by the prominent Italian sports newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport, which is owned by RCS MediaGroup.

It is the second year that Air Partner’s Commercial Jets division in Milan has acted as the charter supplier for this event. The team worked very closely with the race’s official travel agency, BCD Travel Italia, to organise two passenger and two cargo flights from Amsterdam, where the first part of the race had taken place, to Lamezia Terme in Italy, ahead of the start of the second phase in Catanzaro, Calabria.

The Freight team in Air Partner’s Cologne office was tasked with the transportation of the cyclists’ bikes and equipment. Due to a lack of suitable offload equipment in Lamezia, Air Partner chartered two smaller aircraft (B737-400) Freighters from TNT Airways rather than one wide body aircraft. At departure, the 20+ team vehicles were carefully timed so that each lorry offloaded at the cargo ramp in Amsterdam Schipol at a different time. On arrival, the different team vehicles were called up from the parking area, one by one, to collect their respective teams’ cargo.

“The most important logistical factor in this operation was the coordination of the different team’s cargoes at both the departure and destination airports,” noted Markus Rippel, freight charter broker at Air Partner’s German office. “We were careful to ensure that all the kit from each team was kept together and loaded onto the same aircraft pallets wherever possible in order to facilitate smooth offloading at Lamezia airport.”