American Airlines Cargo has expanded its solution for transporting temperature-controlled shipments to its entire mainline fleet.

The expansion follows a number of tests and trials conducted in partnership with packaging supplier CSafe Global and temperature loggers supplier CargoSense.

American, CSafe Global and CargoSense placed sensors into passive cold chain packaging for the trials. The sensors monitored internal package temperatures while aircraft operated in a variety of climates.

Results proved that temperatures of each package stayed constant, despite changing conditions during transit, meaning all American aircraft offer “ideal environments for passive temperature-sensitive shipments”, the company said.

American will now be able to nearly double its capacity for handling ‘ExpediteTC’ solutions and extend its cold-chain solution network to 30 new stations, including cities like Cincinnati, Memphis and Pittsburgh.

“When it comes to cold chain shipments, reliability is crucial for our customers,” said American Airlines Cargo’s vice president of commercial Roger Samways. “By expanding our offering of temperature-critical shipping on all mainline flights, we are able to provide our customers with access to more than 180 markets, marking the largest cold-chain network in our history.”

CSafe Global’s COO Tom Weir commented: “It was a privilege to work with American to conduct these trials and leverage our innovative thermal shipping solution technologies to ensure even more temperature-critical shipments can travel effectively. Many sensitive, often life-saving goods travel the world thanks to effective cold-chain networks, and we are proud to play a part in that alongside American Airlines.”

CargoSense’s CEO Rich Kilmer added: “When American Airlines presented us with the opportunity to help demonstrate the efficacy of their fleet for the transportation of pharma products, we worked to quickly provide them with validated sensors, our logistics visibility software platform, and custom analytics needed to show their reliability in real-world scenarios. We are excited the pharmaceutical industry can now leverage American’s full fleet at a time that is critical for all of us.”