Mail Force charity flies in 4million masks for NHS and care staff, writes ROBERT HARDMAN

There’s no room for a trolley down either aisle of this Boeing 767 wide-bodied passenger airliner.

Indeed, it’s such a squeeze that, at some points, the cabin crew have to walk sideways.

Not that there would be any takers for a drink anyway, let alone a little something from the duty-free catalogue. Because the owners have stripped out all the seats and the only passengers are boxes of top quality surgical face masks – a head-spinning FOUR million of them in total.

For this is a sight to behold: by far the largest Mail Force airlift to date.

The new charity – set up by this newspaper and our partners with the simple aim of delivering personal protective equipment to those fighting the war against coronavirus – has had so many memorable moments during a short and busy existence in support of our frontline heroes. Even so, we’ve never seen anything quite like this.

I am watching the doors ping open on a chartered jet completely stuffed in both cabin and hold with 25 tons of crucial personal protective equipment worth upwards of £1.5million. Or, put another way, there are enough masks squeezed inside this plane to equip every single doctor and nurse in the entire National Health Service many times over. And it is entirely thanks to the tens of thousands of people who have contributed to Mail Force.

This is a campaign that has no intention whatsoever of easing off the throttle. Don’t, for one minute, assume that we are now out of the danger zone. It is only this sort of crucial kit which stands between Britain and a second wave of the coronavirus (like the one now taking root in Germany).

As we reported at the weekend, donations to this new charity have now smashed through the £10million mark. And it has all happened in less than two months.

There could be no finer illustration of the impact of the Mail Force campaign than the sight of Flight ZF5002 from Shenzhen touching down on British soil yesterday afternoon.

I am standing next to the runway at Bournemouth International Airport, now one of the UK’s major hubs for medical supplies. Nearby stands another PPE airliner – bearing the NHS logo – waiting to take off for another round trip to the Far East.

But the big delivery today is the Mail Force airlift – a specially-chartered airliner which has flown for nearly 14 hours direct from China. A fleet of Mail Force trucks lines up on the perimeter, waiting to get our cargo straight to medical and care teams all over Britain. And there is an upbeat mood among the ground staff as they wait to unload. ‘Everyone wants to muck in and help at a time like this,’ says cargo handler Shell Gillingham, 31, who has been working here at Bournemouth for 15 years.

It’s a particularly special day for her colleague, Emily Wood, 20. Having been furloughed in recent weeks, this is Emily’s first day back at work and she can’t wait to get cracking on the Mail Force cargo.

It’s a slick operation here. No sooner has Azur Air Flight ZF5002 taxied to a halt than the Border Force team are up the steps to do the paperwork pronto so that the cargo can get on its way.

I follow suit with Shell, Emily and the other cargo handlers. The Russian crew are both welcoming and very impressed. ‘You have both ladies and men to unload your planes. In Russia, it is only men!’ says flight attendant Max Chernenko. In the highly competitive Covid-19 era of international freight, a charity operation like Mail Force must seek the best deals going and Azur Air – which normally flies Eastern European holidaymakers to places like Spain, Turkey, Bulgaria and Thailand – offered us the best price.

Captain Ilya Lobastov and his crew have not set foot on the ground for nearly three days (they had to remain on board while loading in China) but are pleased to be part of the global effort to combat the virus. ‘This plane won’t be putting the seats back in until after Covid,’ he explains.

It is a big day for both Mail Force and for the charity’s suppliers, the Lancashire-based Issa Group, which has now helped us to procure seven million masks from one of China’s most trusted medical manufacturers (a factory which usually sees most of its output diverted directly to the Chinese health service).

It was back in late April that Mail Force flew its first plane-load of PPE – including 100,000 masks – into London’s Heathrow Airport. On a rainy night at Heathrow, we saw 20 tons of the stuff worth £1million touch down during some of the darkest days of this pandemic. Since then, the operation has just grown bigger and bigger thanks to the generosity of Mail readers, public figures, businesses and philanthropists.

Three weeks back, we saw our first mega-delivery of a million masks emerge from a plane at Stansted. We have also brought a convoy carrying badly-needed medical coveralls right across Europe from Turkey to the NHS depot near Milton Keynes.

But yesterday’s monster consignment puts all the others in the shade.

PPE comes in many forms –aprons, gloves, gowns and visors – and Mail Force is exploring different ways of sourcing it all. Wherever possible, we try to buy British but home-grown production of some products is minimal. Ask anyone in the NHS, the care sector or the charity world what they need above all else and the answer is invariably the same: Type IIR masks, essential tools in most clinical settings (the ‘R’ stands for fluid-resistant).

Right now, if you want a lot of these, you have to go shopping in China. You also have to be extremely careful that you are buying products with all the correct certificates, test results and filtration rates. That is why Mail Force has gone to a great deal of trouble to ensure that our masks have passed muster with the Department of Health and the UK medical inspectorates.

At the same time, our trustees are looking at where all this PPE can deliver optimum results – be it within the NHS or elsewhere. Right now, many of our best-known charities are facing a desperate struggle to find new funding for PPE just as donations are drying up. And there is nothing optional about it. Without PPE, these charities simply cannot function. So Mail Force is determined to offer assistance where it can.

Meanwhile, Bournemouth International Airport can expect to see many more of these airlifts, too. Back in its days as RAF Hurn, this vast and verdant airfield played a key role as a base for the RAF as well as the Royal Canadian and US Air Forces. Both fighters and bombers were based here while umpteen airlifts for the troops in Normandy and Arnhem took off in 1944 from this broad swathe of Dorset flatland. In modern times, it has become a popular holiday airport, though it has learned to adapt pretty fast.

One area of the airport has become a giant car park for dozens of idle British Airways jets waiting for normality to resume. Another is now busier than ever with PPE. From this morning, the main terminal will start to see fresh signs of life as Ryanair resumes some flights to Spain.

‘Our staff here are very proud of our history,’ says managing director Steve Gill.

Looking at four million masks being unloaded at double speed, I’d say they’re still making it.