3 ms·

"Uh, I was there at the time" Can you verify what I was told in business school in the late 70's (Wharton). I remember reading a case study that said that Smit

by larrys 12y ago

"Uh, I was there at the time" Can you verify what I was told in business school in the late 70's (Wharton). I remember reading a case study that said that Smith was considering flying passengers on the deadhead by installing seats between freight runs. Was there any discussion of that?

graycat 12y ago
I never heard any talk about flying passengers. When I was there, there wasn't much of a 'deadhead' problem, and I doubt that there ever has been: Or it's roughly 8 PM in Seattle, SF, LA, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, NYC, DC, Atlanta, Miami, etc., and the planes are all at such cities. Packages from those cities are loaded, and the planes fly to Memphis, getting there ballpark at midnight. The packages are sorted and the planes loaded. The planes fly back to the cities and get there ballpark 6 AM or so. So, so far no deadhead flights. Well, might have a lot of lower priority packages didn't move from the origin cities, so load those on, fly to Memphis, sort near noon, load the sorted packages, and fly back to the remote cities. Still no deadhead flights. At times, for some extra revenue, FedEx did some airmail flights for the USPS and/or some cargo charter flights, and, then, sure, there could be some deadhead flights, but such flights were so rare and unpredictable that getting human passengers would not have been promising.
dingaling 12y ago
FedEx tried off-peak passenger carriage in the early 1980s when they received their first 737s. The seats were on pallets installed through the cargo doors. UPS tried the same idea with 727s in the early 2000s but in both cases it proved too disruptive to normal operations. However several European airlines today operate the inverse service with quick-changers, primarily passenger service and remove the seats at night for mail carriage.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

by larrys 12y ago

graycat 12y ago

I never heard any talk about flying passengers. When I was there, there wasn't much of a 'deadhead' problem, and I doubt that there ever has been: Or it's roughly 8 PM in Seattle, SF, LA, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, NYC, DC, Atlanta, Miami, etc., and the planes are all at such cities. Packages from those cities are loaded, and the planes fly to Memphis, getting there ballpark at midnight. The packages are sorted and the planes loaded. The planes fly back to the cities and get there ballpark 6 AM or so. So, so far no deadhead flights. Well, might have a lot of lower priority packages didn't move from the origin cities, so load those on, fly to Memphis, sort near noon, load the sorted packages, and fly back to the remote cities. Still no deadhead flights. At times, for some extra revenue, FedEx did some airmail flights for the USPS and/or some cargo charter flights, and, then, sure, there could be some deadhead flights, but such flights were so rare and unpredictable that getting human passengers would not have been promising.

dingaling 12y ago

FedEx tried off-peak passenger carriage in the early 1980s when they received their first 737s. The seats were on pallets installed through the cargo doors. UPS tried the same idea with 727s in the early 2000s but in both cases it proved too disruptive to normal operations. However several European airlines today operate the inverse service with quick-changers, primarily passenger service and remove the seats at night for mail carriage.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]