Chapman Freeborn Air Drops Provisions to French Adventurer



“Chapman Freeborn Comes to The Rescue of Hungry French Trans-Pacific Rower Off Northwestern Coast”

Atlanta, Georgia, November 9, 2005 – When Emmanuel Coindre rowed his one man rowing boat in under San Francisco’s famous Golden Gate Bridge at 22:30 on November 1st after 129 strenuous days crossing the Northern Pacific, he had Chapman Freeborn in part to thank for helping him complete the incredible feat.

Coindre single-handedly rowed across the Northern section of the Pacific Ocean in a specially designed one-man rowing boat, Lady Inky, raising funds for Paris’s Necker Hospital for Sick Children. This mammoth challenge consisted of a 9,000 km trip from Choshi, Japan, 100 km from Tokyo, to San Francisco, California. Some 350 nautical miles off the northern California coast, Coindre called his friend in France, Garbaccio, on his satellite phone to say that due to severe weather slowing his progress, he was running low on protein rich provisions and hunger was sapping his strength.

Chapman Freeborn Airchartering, a Global Project Logistics Network member, got a very unusual plea for assistance from a French client, Antoine Garbaccio of Eagle Aviation, whose aircraft Chapman Freeborn frequently charters. Garbaccio called the Chapman Freeborn London Passenger chartering team to plea for help on behalf of a friend, Emmanuel Coindre, a 32 year old self styled “adventurer”.

Due to their past experience with Chapman Freeborn, Garbaccio knew that they are very good at finding innovative solutions to unusual problems. As such Garbaccio called Chapman Freeborn’s Julie Black who immediately contacted her London office colleague, Claudette Gharbi. At the time Gharbi who was on secondment to Chapman Freeborn’s Atlanta office. Claudette worked with Paul Siegel in the cargo chartering department to find the proper aircraft which could do the job. The project needed a cost-effective solution which had the duration to fly out off the coast and drop the provisions to Coindre below. This automatically which ruled out many of the aircraft which would ordinarily have been considered.

Initially, a Mitsubishi MU-2 was located, but when the FAA could not approve that aircraft type to fly so far out to sea. Chapman Freeborn then located a Dornier 228 air drop specialist all the way from Bighorn Airways in Sheridan, Wyoming, who already had FAA approval to undertake such operations. The FAA then required that the operator carry a satellite phone in order to communicate with Coindre and liaise concerning his actual location. This caused another delay while a satellite phone had to be arranged to replace Coindre’s own satellite phone which had since become broken. When communication with Coindre was established, Claudette Gharbi was able to talk with him at length about his requirements and his travels so far.

“Emmanuel had been rowing for 120 days and was deliriously hungry and very happy indeed to see the extremely well-wrapped package flutter down from the rear of the Dornier” says Claudette Gharbi. And Bighorn Airways pilot, Randy Leypoldt was delighted to see it float. “Antoine Garbaccio gave us a very specific shopping list of 200 chocolate bars, bags of cakes and cookies, chewing gum, vitamins, instant mashed potato mix, peanut butter, Nutella,” continued Gharbi, “and of course, the satellite phone!”

The whole operation took Chapman Freeborn only two days to arrange and undertake.

Chapman Freeborn is the largest air charter broker in the world with 47 offices in 19 countries worldwide with nearly 450 personnel and an annual group turnover of over USD 250 million. Chapman Freeborn is also a member of the Global Projects Logistics Network (GPLN), which is a non-exclusive professional projects logistics group for independent companies specializing in international projects shipping by air, sea and land as well as specialized lifts and handling of oversized, out-of-gauge and heavy lift cargo.