Alaska-based Lynden Air Cargo has asked federal regulators to allow airdrops of relief supplies below the current minimum altitude of 1,000 feet after receiving approval to modify a Lockheed L-100 Hercules transport aircraft with a system for delivering pallets out the rear ramp door.
The cargo airline said in a regulatory filing and blog post that the ability to deliver humanitarian aid while aircraft are in flight will help it respond to natural disasters, conflict zones and other rapid-response situations, such as earthquakes, where access to airfields is restricted. Requests to fly emergency missions for the American Red Cross, International Committee of the Red Cross, U.N. World Food Program, Federal Emergency Management Agency and other groups are growing, it added.
Lynden Air Cargo, a unit of multimodal freight transportation and logistics company Lynden Inc., carries everything from groceries to autos to bison within Alaska through scheduled weekly services and moves goods worldwide through on-demand charter flights. It regularly transports materials and supplies to remote and challenging destinations in the Alaska Bush and high Canadian Arctic that aren’t connected to highways or ferries.
The Federal Aviation Administration last month issued Lynden Air Cargo supplemental type certification – similar to an intellectual property right – authorizing the alteration of the L-100 Hercules airframe with the pallet aerial delivery system. The company purchased the system from Safair, an airline in South Africa that also operates the civilian version of the C-130 Hercules, according to the article on its website.
Lynden on May 31 applied for an exemption that would allow it to deliver goods from an altitude of 500 feet above ground level, saying it would give pilots more flexibility to adjust to operational circumstances. The minimum altitude for airdrops under existing rules is 1,000 feet above the surface under clear weather conditions. Lynden’s protocol is for two trained loadmasters to operate the pallet system in the cargo hold.
Flight testing in January showed no adverse effect on safety when drops were conducted between 500 and 1,000 feet, Lynden said in the filing. During simulated missions, flour bags and sandbags were dropped from the cargo ramp to refine how pilots use visual cues for the release point and verify drop accuracy.
It also noted that the FAA has granted an exemption for aerial delivery to Alaska International Airlines from similar minimum altitude requirements.
The ideal altitude for using the pallet deployment system is 700 feet, but it can be safely operated as low as 500 feet.
The FAA can waive altitude restrictions case by case, but Lynden Air Cargo is seeking an exemption of two years or more so it can respond to humanitarian crises without delays and administrative burdens.
“Lynden Air Cargo’s humanitarian, emergency, and disaster relief operations are conducted in the public interest in areas so remote that delivery other than by airdrop is impractical. Granting the exemption will allow LAC to utilize its aircraft to provide logistics support to … governmental and nongovernmental organizations around the world. Without this exemption, LAC will not be able to operate the new [system], in which case there will be no readily available aircraft in the U.S. civil fleet that can perform these types of critical operations,” the company said in the filing.
Lynden said it could equip up to 10 L-100 Hercules freighters with the pallet airdrop system. Some of the dozen aircraft in the fleet are approaching 50 years of age.
An extensive amount of work went into adding aerial delivery capability, including parts manufacturing, drafting hundreds of engineering drawings and reports, ground and flight testing, and flight training for the flight crew, loadmasters and ground safety officer, along with revising operations, flight training and maintenance manuals.
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