Air freight transport has been developing quite dynamically in recent times. This also applies to oversized and heavy cargo. This is particularly noticeable in the area of activities related to the construction of international investments. Moving large components of investment facilities and technological equipment is becoming a permanent part of services provided by air transport. Due to the significant cost of transporting such cargo, every transport operation must be logistically prepared in a way that ensures maximum utilization of financial resources and time. As part of the Oversize Baltic project, the possibilities of carrying out oversized cargo (OOG) transport by air using the transport infrastructure of the Baltic states were analyzed.1. INTRODUCTION
The Oversize Baltic project concerns the transport of oversized cargo in the Southern Baltic Region. The project covers selected areas of Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and Sweden. In recent times, there has been significant interest in the air transport of oversized cargo. This is related to the increasing development of investments carried out with the participation of international capital and the specialization of centers scattered around the world, producing individual components as well as entire technologies. About 30% of the global air fleet is involved in the transport of goods [1,3]. In the case of cargo with significant mass or dimensions, these are goods of very high value and technologically advanced. The world leader in the air transport of oversized cargo is Volga-Dnepr Airlines (VDA), which carries 56% of super-heavy and oversized cargo [11] using Ilyushin Il-76 and Antonov An-124 aircraft. Furthermore, in the global fleet, the transport of goods is carried out mainly by Antonov An-225, Boeing 767, 767 and 747 cargo, McDonnell Douglas DC-8 and 10, MD-11, and Airbus A300 cargo aircraft [10,12].
Although the cost of air transport is still very high, in many cases, e.g., equipment failures and the resulting production downtime, the need for rapid transport of cargo in connection with humanitarian activities, especially in the case of various types of cataclysms, which has been particularly frequent in recent years, the lack of sufficient road infrastructure, etc. (…)
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Source: Logistyka Magazine 2/2011