Volga-Dnepr Airlines’ iconic An-124-100 freighters delivered 11 generators, weighing 57 tonnes a piece, to Madagascar’s capital city Antananarivo.
The added juice provides a critical boost to the country’s power grid, where rolling blackouts triggered social unrest in 2014, and a cyclone that struck this March caused widespread power outages.
A 2016 World Bank report found that access to electricity services in the country is low “by any standards. The estimated current electricity access is around 12-13 percent.”
Once installed, the generators will boost the capacity of the existing power plant in Antananarivo to 120 MW.
Volga-Dnepr worked closely with worldwide heavy transportation and lifting company ALE, to ensure the most efficient delivery, which enabled two generators to be carried onboard the An-124-100 at a time.
Vladimir Bykov, Head of Volga-Dnepr’s Cargo Planning Center, explained that the generators were loaded into the aircraft in Mauritania, using an external crane, while in Madagascar “the cargo was unloaded directly to trailers to save time and money for the customer.” Bykov assed that the loading/unloading technology that was first tested by the airline’s specialists for the delivery of oil equipment to Colombia in 1996.
