VOLGA-DNEPR PEOPLE


‘Let me tell you, the loadmasters take just as


much care and attention over the cargo as an airline’s flight crew would of their First Class passengers.’


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The Load Planning department is responsible for answering those questions, finding out all the relevant information and coming up with answers and solutions. The team consists of load planning engineers who begin working with the cargo even before the flight is fixed. And let me tell you, the loadmasters take just as much care and attention over the cargo as an airline’s flight crew would of their First Class passengers. So, I will continue this ‘conversion’ by maintaining the parallel between passengers and cargo.


Ability to load


So, point number 1: Ability to load. Passengers get into the aircraft cabin on foot. Hardly anyone would think to check whether he or she can fit through the door of the aircraft. For cargo placement, however, the question of loadability is extremely important. The first step is to always check whether the cargo will fit through the cargo door of the aircraft and that also means checking to see if there are any lifting nodes to which we can attach the slings or hooks of the loading crane or winch. We also need to think about whether the strength of the lifting units is sufficient and how they are positioned with respect to the centre of gravity.


What is the base of the cargo? When it comes to looking at super-heavy and oversize shipments, information about the base of the cargo is especially important. After all, it needs to distribute evenly the weight of the cargo because if the load is concentrated in one point, it may damage the floor of the cargo cabin as well as the cargo itself.


Maximising use of the cargo cabin


So what’s next? As I mentioned earlier, passengers find the location of their seats in the aircraft by themselves using the seat number shown on their boarding pass. It’s hard to go wrong! Passenger airlines want to sell the maximum number of seats because they care about their profitability while our job at Volga-Dnepr is to maximize the use of the cargo compartment. In doing so, one of our main priorities is to produce the best benefit for the customer using charter transportation. The larger the volume of the cargo we can take, the more cost efficient the transportation will be for our customer.


That is why our load planners need to know as much information about the load. Of


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