September 7 - Volga-Dnepr Airlines has flown 28 cypress trees to Tashkent, Uzbekistan onboard one of its IL-76TD-90VD freighters.
The 7.5 m tall trees were grown at a nursery in Germany and transported to Brno in the Czech Republic, from where they were flown to Tashkent for a landscape reconstruction project - part of the city's preparations to host the 2016 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.
Volga-Dnepr operated the flight on behalf of Russian logistics company Haltec-Avia.
"The trees were packed inside special protective boxes that were too tall to be loaded using the aircraft's onboard crane system," explained Volga-Dnepr Airlines sales executive Vyacheslav Shakhov.
"In order to avoid the costly rental of external cranes we brought our own special loading equipment from Leipzig to the Czech Republic, which enabled us to load the trees using the aircraft's ramp and rail system, and a forklift truck."
