Long story short, I'm doing a grad school project on Emirates and how they select their engines. Other groups in the class have other airlines, Delta being one of them. We're flying out to Toulouse in a few weeks to visit, interview and present with Airbus and Snecma , coincidentally on this direct flight.

The topic came up a few weeks ago that the only reason this flight still exists is to ship the cores to Snecma for final assembly. I could believe that on face value until we really started getting in to the research phase and realized the CFM56 cores weigh ~4700 lbs with dimensions of 104 x 61 inches (not including the shipping cradle)... The largest cargo door on on the 767 is the forward door at 134 x 67 so technically it could fit with a low profile "pallet".

I tried to look at seat maps to see if less pax were aboard to offset the weight but realized that if that were the case, the seats would just be blocked off anyway.

So... Aside from sitting in the freezing cold at the observation hill next to the airport with a pair of binoculars, can anyone (hint hint OHDL1) confirm GE is shipping their cores in the belly of CVG-CDG?

Yes, there is money riding on this.