I would guess they calculate shipping cost on 'per phone'. 14 hour flight from China would cost give or take $300,000 on a large cargo jet. If a plan can pack

I would guess they calculate shipping cost on 'per phone'. 14 hour flight from China would cost give or take $300,000 on a large cargo jet. If a plan can pack in 300,000 phones, the cost of shipping would be $1 / phone for a product that costs $800. If they sell 250 million phones per year, it's $250 million in air freight cost for iphones. Even if we are generous and pretend margin for air cargo business is 20%, Apple would say maybe $50mil/year by operating their own fleet.