Air Charter Service (ACS) arranged the charter of the Antonov AN-225 to transport a 182 tonne transformer, the heaviest single piece of cargo flown in the Americas.

The Brazil and Florida offices worked together to charter the giant aircraft to fly from Sao Paulo to Santiago de Chile, where it is a direct replacement for a damaged transformer in a plant near the capital.

ACS Americas president, Richard Thompson says: “A lot of careful planning went into this operation. 182,000 kilos is more than most cranes’ lifting capacity, and with the tricky dimensions, it took almost four months of discussions between us, the client, the airline and the airports to plan the charter and exactly how we would load and offload the cargo.”

He adds: “The power unit is more than four metres high, and that doesn’t include the transportation cradle that it is travelling in. As you can see from the photo, it was a tight fit, even for the world’s largest cargo aircraft. It generated a lot of local attention, with many Brazilian television networks covering the loading and departure.”