Every night in the U.S., an Airbus A300 aircraft takes off from Denver, Colorado bound for Memphis, Tennessee.
Nobody is on board except for the pilots and often the flight starts and completes its route with an empty hold.
Eagle-eyed planespotters have also wondered in internet posts why it sometimes heads the wrong way for 200 miles. The cost of this exercise comes in at some $30,000 a night.
Sounds crazy? Maybe. But this is how FedEx Express, the world’s largest cargo airline, aims to cover most eventualities across this stretch of the USA as part of the quest of its parent company FedEx FDX +0.13% to deliver parcels worldwide within one to two business days.
“Flight 1311 departs every night of the year, though the number varies by the month,” says Marcus Martinez, managing director of the company’s global operations control at FedEx’s sprawling 880-acre airfield at Memphis International Airport.
“It’s our flying spare, attempting to sweep up anything that our other aircraft don’t pick up.
“It costs $30,000 a night to fly that plane empty. But if it flies empty, it means that we don’t have to recover volume from elsewhere in the network.”
.Yahoo
