Longtail Aviation, Bermuda’s only Air Carrier, has added its first B747-400F Freighter to its VIP charter capability. Operations Specifications for the Boeing 747 were issued to Longtail CEO 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 their ambitious timeline. CHAMP’s Weight & Balance team was there to answer that need with its industry-leading, rapidly implemented solution, which was accomplished in less than 3 weeks from first contact to go-live.

CHAMP Weight & Balance is a powerful tool for advanced load planning. It is designed to make freighter aircraft loading safer, faster and more efficient. It not only helps to reduce costs and make maximum use of available space, but its state-of-the-art algorithm also achieves fuel-saving targets and a reduced carbon footprint. The enhanced Autoload functionality also provides a user-friendly, convenient software which complies with all safety and auditing regulations. Its unique stand-alone version allows safe load planning even during ad hoc charter flights to remote locations with no internet connection.

“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” says Lee Booth, Vice President Global Products at CHAMP Cargosystems. “We are delighted that CHAMP could support Longtail Aviation in achieving its goal to set up operations in such a short timeframe.”

Martin Amick further commented “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.” McIntyre summed it all up in a very British fashion: “CHAMP is a nice bit of kit!”

Martin Amick adds: “We are very pleased with the result. CHAMP provided an easy-to-use and very flexible answer - capable of handling the needs of our new nose-loader.”