A kilogram of pure cocaine "accompanied by police for controlled delivery" from TXL to FCO.

Someone had ordered it somewhere in Paraguay, from where it was flown into LEJ by DHL. It was found during a routine spot check and handed over to the federal police. As its market value was estimated EUR 250.000,-, the German Federal Police decided to send it down to Rome on a normal passenger flight accompanied by a police officer, who was ordered to hand it over to the Italian authorities... Yeah, bye bye :D

The icing was the quetsions to us whether or not we preferred to keep it in the flight deck during flight...

Condoms
 

Around 25 million of them. Miami to Brasilia on behalf of the Brazilian government for free distribution during Carnival at Rio, Salvador & Sao Paulo. This was one of two shipments which originated at Hong Kong. B.744-F.

Bull Semen / Bullets
 

When I started shifting freight around the world the most common shipment being sent was Bull Semen (in refrigerated liquid nitrogen). Had one of the flasks crack on me when it was collected. You would not believe the mess it made on the van.

An absolute shed load (and I am talking millions upon millions) of bullets. I have sent them around the world (and back again).

Just two of the strangest things I have sent around the world.

In 20 years working on the ground at Luton two cases spring to mind.

A box of 6 Penguins (not chocolate biscuits) on a regular BAC1-11 passenger flight to Shannon and a chartered DC3 to transport a Dolphin.

Rudolf Hess on his final flight

That was my bull seman - always wondered what happened!
 

I was a very naive and unwise investor in a bull semen partnership.

We owned some very fancy bulls and were shipping their semen to Packistan, Afganistan, ...stan, to help them improve their cattle herds.

The 20 limited partners finally realized that we were not going to make any money when the general partner flew home from one of those countries, he was to get payment for the seman that was not broken enroute, and was arrested at JFK for bringing back a lot of very expensive powder instead of a lot of thousand dollar bills. All we had to do was convince the DEA we were ignorant - it didn't take them long to realize we were also stupid!

I lost a very significant sum on that stupid idea - worse my 28 year old wife lost all confidence in my ability to manage our money. Twentysix years later I am still trying to convince her I can manage the money and it is safe for her to retire. ( I sold my business 10 years ago)

The REALLY dumb thing was that my father, a veternarian, was one of the world's experts in the area of third world cattle herd improvement and was a consultant for WHO. He begged me not to make that investment. But how can a 60 year old professional tell his 37 year old son anything?

Live and Learn?

TacomaSailor,
With difficulty - and, in any case, we all have to do our own thing.
I listened to my parents - up to a point.
Our children listened to us - up to a point.

Anyway, beautiful sailing area; similar to the Clyde estuary but on a rather grander scale :)

Oh, getting on thread, couple of young female gorillas, one of whom took a fancy to the FO and grabbed his hand - friendly like but FO got a bit of a shock (I would too).
Huge number of shaheens (Arabic for peregrin falcons?) coming aboard passenger GF L1011 in Karachi and crapping all over the place. Owners were mega rich/influential so that was OK.:rolleyes:

Simon Mann and Mark T. organising a bit of strange freight
 

Just saw this on Dutch TV, a lot is in English:
Player omroep.nl

or click: http://cgi.omroep.nl/legacy/player?/...b.20100329.asf


Enjoy...
Pilot Crause Steyl, and Simon Mann on Tatcher, can be seen arround 20 mins from start of documentary

Not in the same leagues the rest of the posts but a gearbox for a broken down campervan in a PA28-181. Needed a front seat pax to keep C of G inside the envelope. Also did a differential for a different campervan as on another flight.

I hauled a plane full of Muslims for Eid al-Adha, some holiday. and one plane was full of the luggage, most of it was that water they get, don't know much about it but it was strange.

Lobsters for dinner anyone?
 

Picked a family on a tour around Africa in a chartered G5 I think. Anyway, all the pax boarded the C208 whilst I got to fly their luggage in BE58. They had just arrived in Durban from Cape Town and we were taking them to their private game lodge North of Durban. Their jet could not land there. Happily loaded all the contents and set sail in a manner of speaking. Arriving at said lodge we commenced unpacking the goods. One of the cool boxes seemed to swish about a bit when we unloaded it, so a rather fetching young game ranger'ess (female version, you get the picture) lifted the lid somewhat non-chalantly and nearly got here fingers clipped off by the biggest live lobsters I have ever seen, flown all the way up from Cape Town and freshly caught that same morning. Anyway, reckon her scream frightened them more than they frightened her and the lid was quickly replaced. Ahh said the chef, dinner has arrived. Glad those cretins never got out in the cruise!!:eek: Yikes!!

Ghoulish Cargo at Little Rock, Ark.
 

Southwest Airlines (SWA) finds a shipment of human skulls in their freight. Link to the story Airline seizes dozens of human heads - Life- msnbc.com. This may shake a few cargo rats up a bit . . . . :eek:

280 Kg of rocks in 10 bags on a pax flight.
Don't laugh....

Baby sharks from FAPE to FAJS for export. On another occasion a goat in a crate and a crocodile in the same hold right next to each other. Must have been great entertainment in that hold.......in the dark!

Strangest of all though was Jacob Zuma.........before he used to fly in South Africa 1.

111

Baby Elephants
 

I once carried two baby elephants to Malaysia from South Africa:D:D

plane full of rubber dog !!!! outa honk kong!

Full shipload of Barbie dolls from KUL to the US (can't remember where exactly) in 1995 on a Fedex (ex FT) B74SF.

Charter was from the Mattel (they have a factory near KUL) for the Christmas season.

On the day of the flight (departure around 2200local), the freight company AEI (now absorbed into DHL-Danzas-Deutschpost etc) had only 5 guys doing the palletising AND sending the pallets into the customs warehouse..it was very close but that wasn't the only problem!

They ended up with an extra lower-deck pallet! After loading the bulk compt (two trolleys) we broke down the pallet and loaded it into the bulk... we had some left over, what now?

Well the B74SF doesn't have a nose door like its purpose built freighter sisters, instead it has a kind of storage area, maintenance usually keeps stuff like cases of engine/hydraulic oil and even spare tyres. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Since none of us in KUL were qualified for B74F loadsheet (it was on the way out even then...:sad:), there was a load-master on board...we approached him and asked if we could load the overflow in the 'forward bulk' ..he asked "how many boxes do you have?" ... "a couple" was my reply!
To speed things up we pulled back the left side barrier on the airstairs and angled the belt loader so it reached the doorway platform.. We could do this as the cartons were not heavy... We were lucky there was a loadmaster on board, even if we had been qualified I think it would have been difficult to convince the crew!

We couldn't put it the overflow on a later scheduled flight as there was no paperwork (AWB-airwaybill) and the customs had already been 'cleared'.

Didn't delay the flight much too!

..................

Another charter I remember was when I was working in SIN with CIAS, a ground handling agent..There were a lot of interesting charters and one memorable one was by a forwarder called 'Airmark' if I remember correctly. This was a B747 of the IRIAF (Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force) which was specially built as an aerial refueller but still had cargo capability. There was a 'boom operator' in the rear and positions T and S were sacrificed for this. The operated had a contoured couch and lay face down and operated the 'flying boom', remember theIran Air Force had F14 Tomcats! There was a guardrail around this area to protect the operator (from falling freight?!). Some of the aircraft had nose-loading but some had a refuelling receiver in the nose just below the cockpit window.. there was no nose-door and on the inside you could see the hose running down the side of the airplane.

Anyway ...to get back to the charter... The IRIAF brought along their own pallets.. these were military style 88x108ins pallet, not the normal 96/88 x 125ins you find usually... no problem as the aircraft was already configured for this and they had their own loading staff anyway. These military pallets came with their nets but as they were designed for C130 operations they came up very short..solution? drape the nets over the pallets and use jute rope and thread them between the edge of the nets and the base... about 2-3 feet!! Very iffy! A point of note..Military pallets do not use the stud track at the edge which accepts the single/double studs common on civillian ULDs, instead, the pallets have metal loops around the edges and the nets hook onto to them and are tightened like a strap.

The pallets were all built up on time and staged at the postion..

When the first pallet went it...it literally hit the roof! The pallet was built too tall.... this sometimes happens when pallets are not built up well, not a good start! After this was rectified, by the usual way, send a guy up to stomp on the cargo and re-tightening the net, it was found that the second, and third, and practically all pallets were over-height!

What happened was the forwarding agents gave the instructions to its staff as to the number of pallets and type/heights. The usual way the heights are specified is either 96 or 118ins ...the guys followed the instructions and measured the way they usually did (without any problems),from the floor of the pallet, WITHOUT taking into account the fact that the military pallet was about 2 inches thick! There was a lot of running around on the ramp on that day!

Anil

Last week took a Tiger from EMA to BFS for the zoo

Part of the remains of chess genius Bobby Fischer to Stockholm, after a court had decided on a DNA match of him and his "daughter" who´s family was after some good old cash since his death.

Turned out she wasn´t his daughter!

Not a strange cargo per se but very odd crew baggage. One of my instructors at Seattle was ex Pan Am, he told me how on a London trip he saw a Mercedes sports car for sale, I can't remember the model, the price was right so he bought it. When he asked the LHR station manger about getting it shipped to the US the manager told him why not just put a crew tag on it and he would put it in the hold as crew baggage as they were positioning an empty 747 back to JFK.

Thinking of cars in the freight hold, in the late 80's DHL/EAT purchased some CV580's from Summit in the US. One of the ramp managers in BRU on detachment from CVG, Mike S*****, (great guy by the way) arranged to import his VW on the main deck. It just, just, fitted in and we had a fun time getting it out again in BRU. The problem appeared when Mike took it for service. "What is this monsieur?" asked the VW dealer. "It's a VW Golf of course" said Mike. "No monsieur- it may look like a Golf but is a VW Fox built in the US for the US market and we have no parts for this!"

Inkjet bombs.. No DAC labels on those I bet!

Strangest freight?

I wouldn't consider Euros a strange freight, would you?

But maybe the amount...3 billions. :{

Ever seen an Aeroflot stewardess cry?

I was at Accra refuelling aircraft impressed into the UN Congo airlift in July 1960. Two brand new IL18s arrived as the Soviet contribution. They had been on Moscow - Prague service but had been ordered straight on to Accra, so still had cabin crew on board.
As pure passenger a/c they weren't much use for heavily equipped troops (USAF C130s did almost all the lift), so they were loaded with cwt (112 lbs in old money) sacks of flour, one on each seat. Flour everywhere. The Aeroflot girls were intensely proud of their new aircraft (they hadn't seen a Britannia till they got to Accra!), and yes, I saw the two stewardesses on the first a/c weeping at the top of the steps as bag after bag of flour was carried past them.
Incidentally, the Soviet Embassy paid for their fuel in gold roubles, causing me to mention this to the appropriate person in UK High Commission - what would the Soviets be doing with a ready supply of gold roubles in Ghana?
If anybody's interested I've got a few other reminiscences of the airlift, and a few photos of the a/c.

Regular shipments of over 20 tons of Body armour from MAN to DXB, Final destination Bagdad.
Nothing strange in that except the said body armour was manufactured in
Oman! Shipped to LHR then by road to MAN then flown back to middle east. Has someone got soething to hide

A few years back I did some Dispatching at EGSS. Came in late one afternoon for the evening shift and one of our Ramp Leaders, who had the broadest west country accent you can imagine regailed us of his day.....

"Well this morning I was doing the Cyprus, loading instructions said one piece at 100kg in the forward hold. Well with 10 minutes to go no sign of it. Now rules is ain't if, if it's cargo and don't turn up, don't f**king go does it? So we closed up cleared away, pushed back and f**ked off. Five hours later I got called into Boss's office, Andy I gota suspend ya. Party of twenty to Cyprus for a funeral, sandwhiches laid on for 200, no deceased".

So needless to say HUM's became the watchword over the coming weeks. So late one evening as the show was coming to an end most of us sat around the table in the rest room awaiting home time, with just another Cyprus going on in the background. Radio crackles to life

"Cyprus from ops"
"Go ahead"
"Malc, have you loaded that coffin yet?"
"Nooooooo"
"Whatever you do don't load that coffin. I've just had the undertaker on the phone and he thinks there's been a mixup at his end"

I've never laughed so hard with so many other people. I had to pull over on the way home because I coulnd't see where I was going for the tears in my eyes.

hahaha that's a classic one - condoms to brazil! where were you flying from?

Strange Freight
 

Flying a metal box "trommel", only one, from a mine in east-Angola to Luanda during 2001, in a Hercules C130, full of diamonds !!! :oh:

Boerseun: Welcome and nice to see a fellow Afrikaner on PPRuNe! I grew up in "die Baai", so very close to you.

Sorry back to topic now..

my friend said during the 2010 world cup the british government sent 40 billion condoms down there to stop people getting aids. It was a load of boxes hehe

B777F

100 tonnes or so of wooden chair legs....dunno where the rest of the chairs were:eek:

Live rainbow trout to Red Dog mine in northwest Alaska.

Seems. as if animals are always the strangest freight. I once had a very large sled dog team in a very small airplane--Piper Chieftain. Most of the seats were out, so, looking back, it was all sled, bags, 13 dogs, and one musher. After not too long, two of the females fell out, and the view looking back was just teeth, claws and flying fur. Quite a sight, lots like a really bad bar fight. The musher solved it all by literally wading into the fray and biting one of the offending dogs as hard as he could on her right ear. After that, all was quickly quiet, and he looked up at me and grinned.

Otherwise, a 747 should hold about 170 pregnant cows. But, when that mission suffers big delays, those ladies start having big problems if they are not off-loaded and watered. One of the most entertaining experiences of my career so far was watching my flight engineer trying to coax our local handlers into recruiting some willing local rancher into helping us. Which they did, and all was well. Nearly 200 pregnant cows on a Belgian cargo ramp is quite a sight.

I had six cruise missiles on one flight and a live, Navy seal (not the human kind) on another. Both during military charter flights.

I did that with TIA/Transamerica Herc's during the latter 70's through the mid 80's, while based @ Dundo.

Bull semen packed in a liquid nitogen dewar. Delivered by armed guards.

More Semen & Stuff
 

Every Monday, we carried 15kgs (gross weight) of Pigs semen from London to Denmark so a) I guess Danish bacon is actually English and b) the supplying farmer must have had an enertaining weekend.

Also carried British Olympic rowing teams "boat" to Ibiza for training but even on a Caledonian Tristar , it was too long to get in forward hold. We ignored the shippers instruction to "cut it in half" but that is exactly what they did then stuck it together at destination.

The USA used to buy it's surgical gloves from Taiwan and on arrival, irradiate them to kill all bacteria but their facility was broken. So gloves were sea freighted to the USA, we flew them to the UK, they were irradiated (told it was Sellerfield) and then we flew them back. According to agent, Gamma radiation kills all bacteria but not dangerous to aircraft or pax.

Got sent over to DSA to offload a full B737 QC of very angry lions !!! Very strange seeing two blokes walking around the ramp with shot guns

TSUP

Normal day offloading the pax then was it?
even the two legged are at least grumpy