It’s Not Every Day That a Cargo Charter Involves a Helicopter Landing in a Car Park!

Earlier this month, the Chapman Freeborn broker team in Germany, received an urgent cargo enquiry to transport a delicate 600kg package, which turned out to be a very unique operation.

The cargo comprised of 12 pallets, that contained automobile parts needed for a production line at a plant in Mühlheim an der Ruhr. The cargo was onboard a scheduled long haul flight from China to Frankfurt. During the flight, the production plant urgently required the pallets to be delivered sooner than originally planned to avoid a line shutdown.

The broker team were contacted and set to work.

The time to deliver the cargo from Frankfurt Airport to the plant based in Mühlheim an der Ruhr by road haulage would take over 3 hours. The nearest airport to the plant was still an hour away, therefore another charter cargo plane would not be the quickest solution this time.

In record time, the broker team managed to position a EC145 Eurocopter at Egelsbach airport, fifteen minutes away from Frankfurt International Airport.

The next challenge for our team was to find a suitable and nearby landing zone that would make the operation as quick as possible. The employee car park next to the production plant was the ideal location for the EC145 to land, our team contacted the client based at the plant and requested that the car park was immediately cleared for landing.

One pallet was loaded straight into the EC145, with centimetres to spare, the fragile 600kg pallet was carefully flown straight to the plant, which enabled the production line to keep running. The remaining 11 pallets continued their journey via road haulage and arrived later.

It’s not everyday that a cargo charter involves a helicopter landing in a production plant car park, but this highlights the ingenuity of the Chapman Freeborn brokers.