When every minute counts

When the race is on. When Rome is burning. When it’s five minutes to midnight – that’s when cargo-partner’s EMERGENCY services come into play. Next to the cost-friendly ECONOMY options and the fast-track PRIORITY solutions, cargo-partner offers the most flexible solutions for extremely urgent transports in the scope of its EMERGENCY services.

Our airfreight teams around the world have their share of stories to tell about exciting last-minute transports. We asked them to relate some of these fascinating stories about how they managed to make the seemingly impossible possible.

Lightning-fast reaction times prevent factory standstill

Victoria: Our client, a manufacturer of automotive components, needed to get an urgent shipment of parts from Romania to Kassel, Germany. The shipment consisted of two crates with 500 kg each. It was 2:30 PM when the client contacted us, and the shipment had to arrive at Kassel Airport by 8 PM in order to avoid production standstill. Unfortunately, the Airport did not have the capacity to handle the crates, and there was currently no aircraft available which could have taken this cargo. We needed to find another solution, so we put everything in motion.

After asking the shipper to repack the goods into loose cartons, we contacted our partners to find an available aircraft. At 3:26 PM, we were informed about an available Cessna 560 with a maximum payload of 800 kg, which would allow us to load 100 cartons with 8 kg each. We sent the offer to the shipper at 3:34 PM, and the shipper confirmed at 4:17 PM. Unfortunately, the confirmation came too late, since the aircraft needed 3 hours of preparation time, and the airport was closing at 7:00 PM.

Finally, thanks to our long-standing relationship with the airport, we managed to convince the airport manager to keep the airport open for 30 minutes longer. At 7:09 PM the aircraft landed at the airport. The cargo was already secured and just waiting for the aircraft. At 7:31, the aircraft was loaded and departed from the airport in Romania. At 8:20, the aircraft landed in Kassel. Mission completed – thanks to effective communication and lightning-fast reaction times by our cargo-partner teams!

Ropeway delivery just in time for the skiing season

Rikard: It was the weekend before Christmas, and our customer in Norway was facing a ski lift standstill. The customer contacted us on Friday, December 22 and told us they required an express shipment of spare parts from the supplier in South Tyrol, Italy. The shipper handed over the 245 kg consignment to our cargo-partner colleagues in Munich. From there, we organized the air EMERGENCY transport via Frankfurt to Gothenburg. The flight was scheduled for the morning of Saturday, December 23.

On Saturday, we found out that the cargo had not been uplifted from Munich as planned, so we rebooked and were assigned space on a flight on December 27. After contacting the airline in Frankfurt directly, we managed to book an earlier flight to Frankfurt on Saturday, December 23 and onward to Gothenburg on Sunday, December 24. The cargo-partner team in Gothenburg made the necessary arrangements for the handover outside of business hours.

At 11:59 AM on December 24, we were notified that the shipment had taken off at 11:29. The goods were handed over to the consignee immediately upon arrival and the ski lift returned to operations. The customer was impressed by our performance and by what we made possible. The skiing season was back on track!

HIV medication saves lives in Nigeria

Ashima: We received an urgent request from a foreign aid agency. They were facing a severe shortage of HIV medication and required an airfreight shipment from Hyderabad, India to Abuja, Nigeria. The timely delivery of the shipment, consisting of 301 pallets with a total weight of 66,645 kg, was of life-saving importance. The operation was particularly challenging due to the short-notice request during airfreight peak season. Thanks to our good relationship with the airline, we were able to book an aircraft and meet the humanitarian needs of the client, with a turnaround of less than 3 hours.

Donor kidney takes a cool flight to Zagreb

Thomas: A hospital in Vienna needed a highly urgent air transport of a donor kidney from Vienna to Zagreb under temperature-controlled conditions between 2°C and 8°C. The hospital informed us only 2½ hours before flight departure that the kidney was ready for transport to Zagreb. We received the kidney 40 minutes before take-off and, thanks to close cooperation with the airline, managed to get it onto the next flight. The hospital staff in Vienna was very satisfied with our service – they now have our number on speed dial!