Hi Less, Yes we are aware, broadly via our regular outsize shippers, that the nose door fleet is starting to wind down. Having said that the amount of tooling that HAS to be shipped as one long length has diminished considerably since the earlier days. Even now, the modern equivalent of the kit we had to use a 124 to fly it to Cape Town is around 60% of the previous linear sizes with a commensurate reduction in dead weight is a major reduction in heartache when you have to ship it to the ar$e-end of nowhere.
The previous shipments we did with the 124 had much less than 25mm height clearance to get into the beast and required us to partially dismantle the kit after functional testing, so that we didn't over stress the floor. with an excessively concentrated load, so it's in everyone's interest if we can get the sizes and weight slimmed down but still do the same job, especially as most of the production sites are far, far away from major airstrips, never mind well-equipped highly international cargo hubs.