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An American Airlines Boeing 777 passenger
aircraft on route to Tokyo suffered an engine failure 18
minutes after take off from JFK airport. The aircraft immediately
returned to JFK where an investigation into the reason for
the failure was made.
The following day American Airlines and Rolls
Royce (the engine manufacturer) had to decide whether a
team of specialists should be sent to fix the faulty engine
or if a replacement engine needed to be shipped from Dallas,
Texas. Transporting the engine by road would take several
days and every hour the Boeing 777 is out of action it’s
costing American Airlines thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
The huge engine had to be transported by air but cannot
be handled by a ‘conventional’ air freighter
as it simply does not fit in their cargo hold.
Both American Airlines and Rolls Royce were
faced with the problem of finding an aircraft not only capable
of transporting the huge engine but also an operator who
could handle the operation quickly and efficiently. They
called upon the services of Aviation Services (Charter Brokers)
to find them the right solution to this Outsize problem.
Aviation Services has previously worked closely with Polet
on many operations and they were well aware of Polet’s
unrivalled reputation for being one of the most reliable
operators in the transportation of heavyweight and outsize
cargo.
Polet had one of their Antonov 124-100 cargo
freighters, capable of carrying up to 120 tons of cargo,
operating in Central America (Mexico) and so were able to
respond quickly to the urgent situation. The contract was
signed between Polet and Aviation Services on the evening
of Monday 26th February
The following morning Polet’s Antonov
arrived on schedule in Dallas at 7 am. The replacement engine
was quickly loaded without any problems by Polet’s
experienced ground crew and safely delivered to JFK in just
a few hours - it took just 15 minutes to offload the replacement
engine at JFK enabling the engineers to start fitting it
to the Boeing 777 almost immediately.
Dmitry Avdeev, MBA Sales Manager for Polet’s
US office in New York was on the scene to supervise the
whole operation and commented "Polet has once again
demonstrated its efficiency and high level of expertise
by handling a time critical and oversize air cargo to the
complete satisfaction of the client. The Polet team worked
very hard co-ordinating and organising this charter and
so were able to respond in a matter of hours to a critical
situation. We would like to thank everybody who contributed
to making this a smooth operation, including all Polet personnel,
handling agents, Aviation Services and Rolls Royce representatives."
Polet Cargo Airlines continues to promote
the unique capabilities of its Antonov 124-100 freighter
aircraft in the outsize air cargo transportation marketplace
and its fleet of seven Antonov 124-100 aircraft, with an
eighth due to be ready for action early 2004, makes it a
heavyweight champion in the transportation of super-heavy
and outsize air cargo.
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