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Liège Airport expands Scania fleet to meet increasing air cargo volume

22 DECEMBER 2020

While most airports around the world are suffering, Belgian Liège Airport is thriving with increasing air freight shipments. As Europe’s seventh largest cargo airport, it handles 2,500 tonnes of freight from 140 flights every day.

The airport recently pensioned its two aging fuel trucks and is swapping them for new Scania P 320 6x4 trucks. Fuel supplies at the airport are managed by the airport itself, which has full responsibility for the entire process from receiving aviation fuel to filling aircraft. With cargo planes mostly arriving at night, fuelling personnel are usually busy during the dark hours.

The airport has a fuel storage capacity of 6,000 cubic metres, which will soon increase with another 1,750 cubic metres. That is needed to meet increasing traffic. In 2020, the airport will supply an unprecedented 550,000 cubic metres and at the end of October broke its all-time record of 2.5 million litres in one day.

Refuelling trucks adapted for airport purposes

This increasing demand is reflected in the tank fleet. The airport presently has a fleet of eight Scania tank trucks and will soon expand further with an additional truck. “The partnership with Scania dates back to 1997,” says Christian Delcourt, spokesperson for Liège Airport. “It started for a simple reason: Scania was the only manufacturer able to supply vehicles low enough to fit under the wings of BAe 146 planes which were common here at the time.”

Refuelling trucks are adapted for their specialised purpose, which, for example, involves lengthening and adapting the chassis. A pumping system with a filtration system is installed as well as equipment that gives access for nozzles as high up as four metres on Boeing 747s.

The first new Scania P 320 has just been delivered and the second will follow in a few months when the tank from the old truck has been reconditioned since the lifespan of tanks is about three times that of a truck.