TRANSATLANTIC CROSSING
Air freight logistics

Even before the victory champagne splashed over Kirby Chambliss’ head in Detroit had begun to dry, the Red Bull Air Race crew had already started packing up the 380 tons of equipment and race infrastructure to be moved by sea or air to the next destination – the first European race of the season in Stockholm on 5 & 6 July. As impressive as it is to see everything from the High Flyer’s Lounge, Race Tower, portable barges for Air Gate pylons, kitchens and electronics equipment dismantled, packed up and shipped within a few days, it is truly astonishing to see the 12 high-performance planes being take apart and packed into protective cases for their air freight on two specially chartered Boeing 747 cargo planes. They may be no larger than a sports car and only weigh about 500 kg, but the 12 precision planes are obviously the race’s most precious pieces of equipment.

“It takes about six hours to take a plane apart and have it ready to be shipped but about a day and a half to put it together,” said Dennis Sawyer, technician for Mike Mangold. “It’s a choreographed thing. We’ve done it so many times that you don’t have to even think about it when taking it apart. But there is a lot thinking to do when putting it together again. The alignment of the wing is critical and you just have to keep moving the wing, the bolts and the shims to get it all right to fit exactly in the right place.”


The planes are dismantled into 10 major pieces. The wings are removed and put into what looks like giant guitar cases. The rudders and horizontal stabilizers from the tail structure are also fragile and put into cases lined with thick foam padding. Most of the electronics and components such as the instrument panel and fuel tank are removed in order to take off the wing. The stripped-down fuselage is strapped down to a air freight pallet – which Sawyer calls a “cookie sheet” because the planes resemble globs of cookie dough to be shoved into an oven. The wings, at about 8 metres, are the longest and the 6-metre-long fuselage, holding the 180 kg engine, the heaviest. “The fuselage stays on the landing gear. It’s self-supportive once the wings are off.”

The one vulnerable area during the air freight, however, is the tires. A flat tire or deflating tire could cause the straps holding the fuselages to the shipping platform to loosen. “The biggest fear we have is a tire going flat for whatever reason,” said Sawyer.

Wade Hammond, Paul Bonhomme’s technician, rides on the cargo planes and checks on the condition of all the disassembled planes. Hammond’s altruism is shared by the other technicians, who all help each other to re-assemble each other’s planes – especially for the heavy lifting involved in re-inserting the sturdy yet delicate wings – which involves about six men.

“I’ll check the straps, adjust them and make sure they’re tight enough,” said Hammond, who explains that the cargo plane air lifts are limited for the long-distance overseas races in Abu Dhabi, the United States and Australia. The planes were ‘ferried’, i.e. flown by a crew member, individually from San Diego by pilots or their technicians to Detroit and will also be flown around Europe. Sawyer, a pilot himself, will fly Mangold’s plane from Stockholm to Rotterdam. Hammond said the 12 planes and the racing equipment from the hangars take up about three quarters of a 747 cargo plane. “There’s some room in the lower deck for more equipment, but not an awful lot,” he said.

While there are duplicate sets of some of the Red Bull Air Race infrastructure so that lower-cost, lower emissions shipping instead of air freight can be used, the planes are needed in all 10 races. “They do an amazing job with the logistics,” said British pilot Nigel Lamb, marvelling at the work of not only the technicians but the mobility of the 300-strong international crew. “I just shake my head at how logistics gets this all together. We’re the lucky ones who come along and get to eat the cherry on the cake. We get to fly on the track which a lot of people spent a lot of time and hard work getting together.”

For the European leg of the World Series which includes 6 stops, the planes will be flown between race locations by a crew member while the entire event infrastructure will be transported by trucks. The huge dismantling and reassembly process resumes in October when everything will be shipped or air freighted over 14,000 kilometres to the grand finale in Perth, Australia on 1 & 2 November.