Originally, that very charter contract should have been executed by the French flag-carrier Air France, like it was the case when any member of the French industrial elite conducted an export operation.
The well-known car manufacturing company Citroën had received a top urgent order from its branch in Peru for a large quantity of Citroën "station-wagon" and one of the requirement was that the vehicles be available at a given date short of what the order would be cancelled.
(A Citroën Station-Wagon. Our main deck was packed with them . I anticipated a Ro-Ro (Roll on / Roll Off) operation....but the main deck loaded never showed up...)
Air France not being able to timely provide the necessary airlift, the freight forwarding company, not willing to postpone shipping, looked for an alternate solution and the Flying Tiger Line was selected to conduct the Paris-CDG to Lima-LIM flight.
In order to optimize to volume available on the main deck of the B747-200 F assigned to the flight, the floor of the airplane was totally covered up with aircraft pallets (1) (also known as cookie sheets) and 29 of these were locked in place before the loading started in CDG. Already familiar with “non-standard operation” as well as extra-dimensional transport, I had recommended the “drive-in/strap in” (2) option rather than standard palletization to optimize the number of cars being taken on board.
Offloading at destination would be probably a bit longer but since a crew rest period was indicated in the charter briefing, a lengthy offload operation using standard main-deck equipment would be no issue at all, and I could sleep all the way from Lima to Los Angeles on the way back.
(An interesting picture : loading a B 747 through the side-cargo door using a loader on which an " height extension" is attached. The loader cannot reach the maindeck but when the extension is placed on the loader; offload is then possible for palletized or unpalletized cargo. This kind of set up may be used by Airlines or Handling agents whose business does not justify investing in an expensing "main deck loader" specifically designed to reach B747 deck height)
With all of the ground handling equipment now removed and the airplane cleared to its next destination, the B747 freighter took off from CDG Paris airport.
After an uneventful flight, the cargo plane landed in Jorge Chavez International, Lima airport. The details of each charter flights were always provided by Charter Department of the Flying Tiger Line at 7401 World Way West in Los Angeles and this particular charter briefing indicated that FTL had contracted Air France in Lima to be our handling agent. Little did we known that the general management of Air France in Paris, knowing our destination, had instructed its Lima station manager not to provide any kind of assistance in a tit-for-tat response to Flying Tigers having been finally chosen over Air France for that transport operation.
If indeed I managed to offload the forward and after bellies loaded with palletized cars, the offloading of the main deck was becoming a challenge I had never faced. Air France being the only airline in Lima owning a main deck cargo loader, my choice was indeed limited to failing the mission or…being creative!
( B 747 cargo showing PDU wheels, power drive units helping to positions pallets in their bays and reducing work needed by loading team....it was fine when it worked...and a pain in the ass when it did not...)
In a quick HF radio conversation with Ops Con (3) I indicated my difficulties and assured the company that I was working on a solution. Being a charter supervisor at “Tigers” often meant “thinking out of the box”. If no main deck loader was available, we had to build one a way or the other. Based on a previous experience offloading cattle from a DC in Paraguana (Venezuela)where no standard cattle ramp was available, I decided to go and look for whatever material I could use to build a strong enough wooden platform which could be then elevated and lowered using 2 seven tons’ forklifts with lateral sliding forks and 1 able to stand 5 tons, the only three foklifts available on the airport.
Jorge Chavez International airport being less than 10 miles away from the Ocean port of Callao, I assumed that in the cargo area, I would possibly be able to discover some wooden skids sized for cargo transport by ocean going ships. The idea was to get hold of three of them, large and strong enough to stand the weight of each vehicle! Without being over-confident, as soon as I found as anticipated the exact kind of skids which we could use, I knew that we had the solution even if doing it my way would be a risky operation both for the vehicles and for the staff handling the airplane.
(Thinking out of the box and finding the required wood skids helped a lot...I had no other solutions available)
The idea was to place one forklift holding a wooden skid in at level in front of the upper deck side cargo door sill, have a driver start the engine of the car, move the car forward until the front wheels were safely on the skid, move the same forklift backwards till the rear wheels were close to the cargo door sill and then place the two other forklifts holding their own wooden skids at level with the rear axle of the car. Then the man at the wheel would have to drive the car forward a bit more to clear the back of the vehicle from the cargo door sill .
Coordinating the movements of the forklifts using a pre-arrange whistle code, (like I had seen being done in Japan) I managed to get the first car fully cleared out of the main deck and lowered to the ground within half an hour, the second car took us 23 minutes, and the third one only 17!
For Flying Tiger Line, it was indeed “Anything, Anytime, Anywhere and starting today in Lima….Anyhow!
(Standard load for vehicles : one per pallet....but there are alternatives to optimize the volume : Roll on / Roll off....just like with ferry boats...)
© 2017 Sylvain Ubersfeld for Commercial Air Transport
(1) Airplane cargo pallets come in several sizes and can be loaded on several types of airplanes as their dimensions are standardized by IATA and known to aircraft manufacturers. Most common sizes are 88X125 inches, 96 x125 inches and 20ft units to carry heavy or bulky loads.
(2) A specific way of loading vehicles on wheel by placing them wherever needed on the floor of the airplane now covered by cargo pallets locked in position. This option requires special adjustments and calculation to be conducted when preparing the weight-and-balance. It is and option widely used for military transport. (3) Ops-Con (Operation Control) maintained a H24 watch and was our first point of contact with the company whenever we would be working a flight on the line and needed to transfer information of anykind.