Antonov Airlines has safely moved 370 tonnes of new machinery parts on three AN-124 flights to a mine in Brazil from Australia in time to keep work at the plant going.

Antonov’s load-planning engineers designed tailored frames to carry two separate pieces of equipment, including a giant drill shaft and a transport cradle, which were required for upgrading machinery at the final destination. Cargo was loaded and unloaded using the airline’s in-house engineering solutions for oversized project cargo shipments.

The flights, chartered by Chapman Freeborn, made a number of technical stops because of the total weight of the cargo, as well as Covid-19 restrictions for crew rest at the airports on the route. Rapid tests had to be conducted during each 14-hour rest window prior to the next leg of the flight being cleared. Antonov completed the flights and delivered the new parts on schedule, in time for the mining machinery to be updated so that the plant in Brazil could continue operations.

“The timeline was challenging – initially our flight plan was six days in total, however we needed to change this to nine days after assessing the load,” said Chapman Freeborn cargo broker, Ana Bocchini. “In the end it came together with some meticulous planning and by changing some legs of the journey to avoid delays and closed runways,” she added.

“Using three AN-124 aircraft to airlift these special project cargoes allowed us to perform the programme of round-the-world flights successfully,” commented Volodymyr Goncharov, commercial executive at Antonov Airlines.