Flights of Fancy in Luxembourg

No event would be an event without a little hitch… Cargolux has of course TWO Cargo Centres and the instructions from Luxair didn't specify which! Fortunately the OTHER ONE (correct one) was only the other end of the runway, and large enough not to miss! In fact at 280.000 square metres it is extremely impressive in size. With over a half a million Tonnes of freight passing through the terminal per year and three complete changes of contents per day, the throughput at the 'Centre of Europe' is astounding. The Cargo Centre is actually owned and run by Luxair, the national carrier of Luxembourg, but 70% of the business comes from Cargolux. The changeover of trucks and aircraft (mostly 747-400) is equally impressive, with automatic stacking and on-board loading . 120 Tonnes of freight is loaded onto one aircraft every two hours, unless of course there is an need for urgency. Then the aircraft can be loaded in just 35mins!

The customs controls, security, specialised handling facilities for everything from Giraffes to… well look out for the cost of flying corpses in pure zinc coffins! NOTHING is unusual!

The midday pause was handled superbly by the Hostellerie de Niederanven,

it was tough to keep to schedule…

The final visit of the day was to SES, The Astra satellite operator, amongst others since SES in fact is currently the largest operator of satellites world-wide. The command centres to keep the co-located satellites in their 150km 'cube' on the geo-stationery orbit, fed with digital and analogue signals, and quality control of the transponder signals were explained. This was followed by a tour of the antennae, and power supply systems, both co-generation plants, diesel sets, and the wave-guide transmission and receiving equipment. The entire day passing without further hitch in full sunshine, see below.