The cargo terminal of Koltsovo international airport (part of the Airports of Regions holding) handled around 150 tonnes of flowers that arrived in the Urals region in the run-up to September 1. Air Bridge Cargo performed three flights from Amsterdam to Yekaterinburg during the last week of August. Boeing 747 carried 50 tonnes of fresh roses, carnations, orchids and hydrangeas for schoolchildren on each of the flights.
The airport involved 20 stevedores to unload one “flower” flight; for comparison, only six of them work on usual days. It takes time and utmost care to handle such fragile and tender freights, so the entire unloading process is manually performed, while it takes not more than 7 minutes to deliver flowers from the board to a storage facility.
Once the unloading is over, flowers are examined in special premises inside the terminal by phytosanitary experts using special lamps. Due to rich experience and the streamlining of all processes, flower vehicles loaded with flowers leave the airport for designated addresses already 3-4 hours after a flight arrives from Holland.
The cargo terminal of Koltsovo airport was opened in 2012 and already in 2013 an international postal exchange office began operating here. Today Koltsovo is one of the most up-to-date national airport-related logistics schemes.