Air Austral has awarded a five-year Unit Load Device (ULD) management contract to CHEP Aerospace Solutions, the provider of outsourced ULD management and repair services.
The French airline, headquartered on Réunion Island, operates a widebody aircraft fleet of three Boeing 777s, and took delivery of its first B787-8 Dreamliner in May 2016, making it the first French airline to operate an aircraft of this type.
Air Austral has chosen CHEP's pooling model to "drive efficiencies, reduce its costs, and benefit from the increased fuel and CO2 savings" by utilising CHEP's lightweight containers.
Air Austral VP Ground Operations and Security, Jean-Jacques Roy, said: "Our partnership with CHEP provides us with immediate cost savings as we don't have to buy ULDs for our new Dreamliners.
"Due to the seasonality of our flights and peak periods in our schedule we appreciate that we can flexibly adapt the ULD inventory in our stations and only pay for the units we use as well as being able to generate additional cargo revenue opportunities due to the weight savings of CHEP's lightweight containers."
CHEP Aerospace Solutions president Ludwig Bertsch said: "Air Austral is a perfect fit for our network and particularly for our leisure carrier customers due to the overlap of destinations which further increases the synergies of our ULD pooling model."
