West Atlantic airlines upgrades
West Atlantic, the cargo airline created in October 2008 by the merger of British carrier Atlantic Airlines, and Sweden's West Air, is to bring together its three current operation centres under one roof at Coventry from the beginning of next year. The new facility will co-ordinate the nightly rotation of 53 aircraft involving 140 aircraft movements and nearly 400 flying staff including those on standby and stood down.
The changeover is a big step forward for the airline, bringing together staff and work practices from three countries - United Kingdom, Sweden and Luxemburg. It involves a major upgrade of all systems.
In order to co-ordinate the whole programme West Atlantic has contracted with the very experienced Danish company PDC (Prolog Development Centre) to supply advanced planning and scheduling solutions.
"Running an essentially night time function at airports all over Europe is a very complex operation," said West Atlantic Sales and Operations Director Russell Ladkin, himself based now in Gothenburg. "Besides the aircraft and their technical support we have to deal with the airports and our handling agents, plus of course our clients, some multi-national companies and at the other end of the spectrum small scale local service providers such as the Jersey Post Office." PDC has been in the business for a very long time (25 years) and we are confident that the solutions they offer will add to our time keeping and reliability record."
West Atlantic is Europe's largest dedicated regional air freight carrier. Atlantic Airlines itself was an MBO from the Air Atlantique Group established in 1969. West Air Sweden started flying in 1962, commenced cargo operations in 1991 and undertook a major expansion into Swedish overnight mail services in 1996 and similarly in Norway in 2006.