Longtail Aviation, Bermuda’s only air carrier, has added its first B747-400F to its VIP charter capability.
Operations Specifications for the B747 were issued to Longtail chief executive Martin Amick last Friday by the Bermuda Civil Aviation Authority.
“The timing is right,” Amick commented. “The global supply chain is under duress, and additional long-range, heavy lift is critically needed to move medical supplies from China to the West. This new aircraft will help meet that need.”
Bringing 16 years of industry experience, Longtail Aviation brought its first all-cargo aircraft into service and required a bespoke software solution to support its ambitious timeline. CHAMP’s Weight & Balance team accomplished implementation in less than 3 weeks from first contact to go-live.
CHAMP Weight & Balance is a tool for advanced load planning. It not only helps to reduce costs and make maximum use of available space, but its algorithm also achieves fuel-saving targets and a reduced carbon footprint.
“In these unusual times it is even more important for the air cargo industry to support the global supply chain and CHAMP’s experience and ability to rapidly set up, train and implement a customer is vital” said Lee Booth, Vice President Global Products at CHAMP Cargosystems.
Amick added: “This addition to our fleet has been under consideration for several months. In mid-March, the aircraft owner approached us with a sense of urgency, asking that we get the aircraft into commercial service on a greatly accelerated timeline. We accepted this challenge.
“It meant, however, that we had to find innovative solutions which we could implement very quickly. One of the challenges was to find a means of calculating weight and balance for cargo operations involving a variety of loading devices.”
Dan McIntyre, Longtail’s Chief Technical Pilot, had used the CHAMP system at a previous airline and recommended it. He points out: “CHAMP’s Weight & Balance solution works very well for producing reliable load sheets, it is very easy to use and has a good user interface both for loadmasters and pilots.
“Although CHAMP’s team performed training for the very first time in an online classroom, it was hands-on and user-lead which allowed us in only three afternoons to take ownership of our data in the system and produce loading instructions and load sheets ourselves.”
