Airport ground support equipment (GSE) specialist Rushlift GSE has provided Virgin Atlantic with a drop-box solution to facilitate the changing of tyres at London’s two busiest airports.
Three ground-level loading Alfa Drop Boxes were supplied to Virgin Atlantic in a leasing agreement which also includes three specially adapted front-wheel drive Fiat Ducato vehicles, for airside deployment at Heathrow and Gatwick airports.
“We were looking at ways of reducing the physical burden on our engineers when manually handling aircraft tyres,” said Shaun Judson, Senior Material Operations Planner at Virgin Atlantic Airways.
“After looking at the Alfa Drop Box system in action we could see just how much more efficient it was compared to our existing tail-lift operation – both in terms of ease of loading and unloading for the engineer and operationally, with its inherent versatility and cost effectiveness.”
The system is fully demountable and enable aircraft tyres, such as those used on the Airbus A340, Boeing 747 and 787 Dreamliner, to be easily loaded and unloaded, with the option as well to remove a box from its chassis for fast turnaround – making it useful for storage as well as transport.
“We were delighted to help support our long-standing customer, Virgin Atlantic, in securing a highly innovative solution to an important airside maintenance task,” said Tim Willett, Operations Director at Doosan Rushlift GSE.
