Frankfurt Airport prepares for the challenge of transporting Corona vaccines

As the date to approve a series of Covid-19 vaccines approaches, Frankfurt airport employees are preparing to deal with the unprecedented logistical challenge of transporting millions of doses around the world.
Frankfurt is the largest center in Europe for transporting pharmaceutical products and will play a key role in the success of the process of vaccinating millions against the emerging corona virus.Lufthansa Cargo Operations Manager Karen Kristan said during a tour of the Controlled Cooled Cargo Center building that the psychological pressure is increasing now that we are entering the hot phase.

Kristan, who uses her skills as a former nurse, is confident that her team is ready for the mission. “The operations are scheduled. We feel very confident and well prepared,” she said.

Max Philippe Conrady, director of freight-related infrastructure at Fraport Group, went further, saying, “We have been in a state of readiness since last August.”

The cargo terminal at Frankfurt Airport has been working around the clock since the outbreak of the epidemic to deliver medicines, medical personnel clothing and masks, and support global supply chains at a time of dramatically reduced passenger numbers and airlines halting their flights.

The vast, temperature-controlled building, located a few kilometers from the main passenger terminal, handled 120,000 tons of vaccines, medicines and other pharmaceutical products in 2019, according to the airport operator Fraport.

The building includes warehouses spanning an area of ​​12,000 square meters with temperature controlled, which is essential for storing medicines, and Christian reported that an area of ​​about 8,000 square meters, equivalent to the size of a football field, is designated for Lufthansa alone.

Warehouses are bustling with movement as ventilation systems pump in conditioned air as employees move from place to place, each other on forklifts, and in one warehouse, boxes containing measles vaccines are placed in preparation for shipment.

Frankfurt Airport includes refrigerated warehouses of an area of ​​two thousand square meters, according to Christan, who indicated that their temperature was controlled between two degrees to eight degrees Celsius, which is the appropriate temperature for vaccines.

Fraport recently increased its investment in advanced “refrigerated vehicles” to transport vaccines from warehouses to aircraft, and now has 20 of them, so that it is possible to load several cargoes at the same time.

Some vaccines, such as the one developed by “AstraZeneca” in cooperation with the University of Oxford, can be stored at cooled temperatures at normal levels during shipment.

On the other hand, the Pfizer vaccine, which was developed at the Biontech laboratory in Mantes, must be stored about 20 km from Frankfurt Airport, at temperatures of about minus 70 degrees Celsius.

This requires containers the size of cars that use dry ice to keep the vaccine at very stable and low temperatures, and it can be stored in this way for up to 120 hours without an energy source, which is long enough to reach distant destinations.

The European Union recently agreed to purchase 300 million doses of the Pfizer / Biontech vaccine, indicating a massive logistical operation, the bulk of which will be concentrated at Frankfurt Airport in the coming months.

While the airport has the capacity to handle very cold shipments, Christian indicated that flight capabilities will be a major factor affecting the pace of vaccine deployment.

Providing a single dose to the world’s population of about 8 billion would require 8,000 jumbo jets, according to estimates released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) last September.

The Etihad added that the shipping sector is facing “the biggest transport-related challenge in its history,” and cargo planes can usually transport nearly a million doses, unless there is a need to maintain temperatures below zero degrees.

Perhaps adding to the size of the challenge is that 40% of annual global air cargo is usually transported on passenger planes, whose numbers have been greatly reduced due to the epidemic, and a study funded by DHL estimated that transporting 10 billion doses would require 15,000 flights.

In turn, Conradi said, Fraport is communicating with manufacturers “to consider how we can reach the optimum level of traffic” for transportation.

Many things depend on the success of the operation, especially in air transport centers such as Frankfurt. Unless the vaccines are rapidly distributed around the world, the aviation sector will not have the number of passengers it needs to continue.