Race against the clock: deliver before 06:00 in Slovakia!

Air Time Critical® received a phone call on a Monday evening shortly before 18:00. A customer wanted to organise an urgent shipment between Belgium and Slovakia. The Slovakian production site of this major car manufacturer faced a line stoppage unless nearly 1,500 kg of car parts were delivered the next day before 6am.

Belgium and Slovakia are separated by more than 1,300 km, a journey time of more than 14 hours by road. Air transport was therefore essential to meet the deadline set by the customer (6am). The ATC® teams therefore proposed an air charter solution because of its carrying capacity and intrinsic speed (500-600km/h on average), but also because a chartered flight does not depend on commercial flight times. Take-off and landing times are set according to the customer’s wishes, day or night. In emergency logistics situations, these ‘à la carte’ schedules offer an unrivalled degree of flexibility.

Also read : Slovakia, which airports for air charter?

Air Charters don’t care about timetables; they take off at the time chosen by the customer, day or night.  

Details of the air charter solution:

• Flight type: cargo air charter
• Service: door-to-door delivery
• Goods: 7 pallets of car parts (1,400 kg)
• Flight route: Ostende/EBOS – Bratislava/LZIB
• Flight duration: 2 hours 50 minutes
• Aircraft: ATR72

Find out more : 5 things you need to know about air charter

We didn’t know for sure what time the parts would be available, so ATC® offered us 2 options to adapt to our production constraints

6 steps for express delivery before 06:00

• 11/07 – 21:00 : Pick up of goods in Belgium
• 11/07 – 23:20 : Arrival of the 7 pallets of car parts at Ostend airport
• 12/07 – 01:17am : Departure of flight from Ostend Bruges /EBOS
• 12/07 – 03:45am : Arrival of the flight at Bratislava/LZIB airport in Slovakia
• 12/07 – 04:30am : Departure of the express van from Bratislava, heading for the production site in Slovakia
• 12/07 : 05:20am : Arrival of the express van on site. Mission accomplished, delivery before 06:00.

Air Time Critical®‘s added value

When you trust Air Time Critical®, you are assured of:

• The Night tracking of the shipment all the way to delivery : For this Belgium-Slovakia transport, the ATC® team was on duty all night to track shipment progress, from pickup on the Belgian site at 21:00 until delivery on the Slovakian production site the next day at 08:00.
• An incredible responsiveness : The ATC® team is available 24/7 and can find a turnkey solution to your urgent logistics dilemmas in a matter of minutes. In this scenario, the customer made a request at 17:45, received a first flight proposal at 18:25, and a second one at 18:35.
• The observance of customer specifications at all times: To meet the specified deadline, the ATC® team worked simultaneously on the 2 options proposed to the customer. This allowed them to work out which one was the most advantageous with regards time and budget. The customer finally selected the second option at 21:45 and the plane took off for Slovakia a few hours later.
• A local presence in Central Europe: Air Time Critical® has been present in Slovakia and the Czech Republic since 2018. Local knowledge, a network of local express service providers and a command of Slovak and Czech mean that pick-ups and deliveries to recipients are hassle-free.

Interested in our air charter solution? Contact ATC®

Contact Air Time Critical®, forwarder specialising in emergency air freight for French and European industrialists:

• via our instant quote webform
• by phone : +32 2 888 84 16 (EN/FR)