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Air industry springs into action to get aid to earthquake victims – updated

[ February 15, 2023   //   ]

Air Charter Service arranged several passenger and cargo aircraft charters into Turkey and Syria to transport search and rescue teams, along with aid for victims of the recent earthquakes.

After the first quake struck in the early hours of Monday 6 February near the city of Gaziantep, close to the Turkey-Syria border, ACS started receiving calls from governments and NGOs later the same morning. Following some research it ascertained that Gaziantep Airport – closest to the epicentre – was fortunately, still fully functional. This was ideal for search and rescue teams, but that meant that it would become exceptionally busy very quickly and, at the time, had limited loading equipment, so was not the best choice for the first few cargo charters.

Adana had more room as well as a highloader available and Damascus in Syria also had plenty of equipment.

By Tuesday morning ACS had its first representative on the ground at Gaziantep Airport to oversee the arrival of our first flight – a chartered Airbus A330-200 from Germany, carrying a search and rescue team. Later in the day the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office’s first search and rescue team, including dogs arrived on board another Airbus A330-200, which was also carrying vital cargo in its hold.

Towards the end of last week the broker started flying in cargo charters, the first of which arrived into Adana, from Spain, on Thursday on a Boeing B747-400 carrying an entire field hospital. Since then it has arranged multiple charters on aircraft including IL-76, B737, B747, B757 and B777 into Adana and Damascus, as well as one each to Incirlik Air Base, in Turkey and Aleppo, Syria.

UPS added that one of its Boeing 767s is currently taking off every night from its hub at Cologne Bonn airport, transporting urgently needed goods to Turkey from national and international aid organizations, UPS employees, citizens, and companies.

The willingness to donate in the region was so extensive that on-site donations are not currently being accepted. In-kind and monetary donations should instead be given to other aid organizations providing support.

UPS and The UPS Foundation are also pledging more than US$1 million in global logistics services and working with the World Food Program, UNHCR and International Red Cross & Red Crescent to fly in relief items from Dubai.

It is also offering transport capacity in UPS trucks for the Istanbul city government and NeedsMap, a local NGO that UPS supports.

In addition it has activated EDUARDO, an emergency air dashboard created by skilled UPS volunteers to help humanitarian relief organizations quickly access all available flight capacity available at airports across Turkey.

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