The 48 ton “Christmas Tree” - a term used by the Oil & Gas industries relating to a specialized piece of drilling equipment - and extra mining equipment weighing a total of 89 tons was transported using one of Polet’s Antonov 124-100 aircraft which is capable of carrying up to 120 tons of cargo. Alexey Ozerov Vice President of Polet Cargo Airlines in New York comments; “The Antonov 124-100 is ideally suited to transport this type of cargo and with the added bonus of our highly skilled and customer orientated support teams all Polet customers can be sure of a smooth ride every time”. A team of Polet technical loaders completed the loading in record time and a spokesman for Cooper Cameron UK said, “We are more than happy with the customer awareness and professionalism shown by Polet
and are confident we are in safe hands”. Strict conditions of highway closure were imposed by the U.S. authorities for the transportation of the “Christmas Tree” consignment by road from Houston to the seaport of Galveston in the Gulf of Mexico. The Houston police authorities had authorized the closure of one highway, during daylight hours only, for the “Christmas Tree” to be transported to the seaport ready for testing on Friday morning.
As the Antonov 124-100 was not scheduled to land until noon on Thursday the highway closure deadline gave a very tight time window to unload the consignment from the Antonov 124-100, load it onto the road transport vehicles – supplied and organized by the freight forwarder Kuehne & Nagel who transport it to Galveston before sunset. The previous best time, achieved by other Antonov 124-100 operators, was six hours to unload a similar cargo. The speed and efficiency of Polet’s technical ground crew more than delighted the 15 representatives of Cooper Cameron who were in attendance to see this well planned and well coordinated operation. A spokesman for Cooper Cameron said: “We are more than impressed with the efficiency, speed and professionalism of such an outstanding company as Polet Cargo Airlines”.
