Moving the Drop Zone

Contribution by Chris Bester

Safair has been involved in humanitarian aid and relief work for a long time and one of the tasks that we’ve often performed using the Hercs is food drops.

At one point we were operating these food delivery contracts on behalf of an international agency in support of people in food scarce regions on Africa.

In the beginning, the food was packed in 50kg bags and loaded onto freight pallets. We then used to drop these heavy pallets in designated zones that were a fair distance away from the cities and towns they were intended for, so that no damage would be caused to structures on the ground.

Unfortunately, the distance between the towns in need and the drop zones identified gave terrorist factions the opportunity to intercept the deliveries and steal the food before the agencies on the ground had the opportunity to load it up and transport it to the people who needed it. We had to find a way to safely perform the drops closer to the towns.

In the true Safair spirit, we tackled the issue head-on and designed an alternative system. We packed the food in smaller, lighter packages and loaded these packages onto lightweight honeycomb structures pallets. The benefit of this design was that the loads could be dropped over the cities and towns without the risk of hurting anyone on the ground or causing damage. The new pallets were also used by locals to build shelters.