Hamburg Süd Delivers Heavy Lift Helicopters

Container carrier Hamburg Sud’s Australia/New Zealand service recently delivered three Erickson Air-Crane heavy lift helicopters to the Port of Oakland. The copters, each 88 feet long, traveled as deck cargo on three separate sailings. The copters’ six main rotor blades, which have a rotating diameter of more than 72 feet, were removed for transport. The blades were reinstalled after discharge and the helicopters lifted off from the port for their West Coast assignments.

Erickson Air-Crane repositioned the helicopters from Australia to the U.S. West Coast to be ready for the North American summer fire season.

The S-64 Aircranes were first built by Sikorsky Helicopter for aircraft and equipment recovery during the Vietnam War and are now built by Erickson. They can lift up to 12.5 tons at sea level. For aerial fire fighting, that translates into loads of up to 2,500 gallons of water at a time, the company said.

Dennis Hubbard, Erickson's Incident Response Program Manager, said that Hamburg Sud’s weekly sailings between North America and Australia/New Zealand allow the company to rapidly deploy the aircranes to seasonal high fire risk areas. Erickson maintains 17 additional Aircranes for heavy lifts that include large-scale construction equipment, mechanical systems, logging and installing power line and ski lift support towers in remote and rugged areas.

Contact Janet Nodar at jcnodar@bellsouth.net.