UPS Airlines

UPS Airlines
IATA code :	5X
ICAO code :	UPS
Call sign :	UPS
Founding:	1981
Seat:	Louisville , United States
Turnstile :	Shanghai Pudong Hong Kong Cologne / Bonn Hamilton Chicago Rockford Dallas / Fort Worth Los Angeles Ontario Miami Philadelphia Shenzhen
Home airport :	Louisville
IATA prefix code :	406
Management:	Robert L. Lekites
Number of employees:	20,513 (2008)
Fleet size:	265 (+ 19 orders)
Aims:	400 US and 435 international
Website:	www.ups.com

UPS Airlines is a US cargo airline based in Louisville . It is responsible for transporting the air freight of the parent company United Parcel Service and is one of the three largest freight airlines in the world .

history

First years

In 1929 Merchants Parcel Delivery (UPS's predecessor company) founded United Air Express . This brokered the package transport on regular passenger flights. For example, Ford AT-5 from United Airlines were used. After eight months, the company ceased operations because of the Black Thursday stock market crash and the global economic crisis that followed.

The forerunner of today's air freight carrier UPS Airlines was the company UPS Blue Label, introduced in 1953 . This parcel stamp was used for shipments that should arrive at the recipient within three days. Freight capacities were used again on regular scheduled flights. Airplanes from Trans World Airlines and the Flying Tiger Line were mainly used for this purpose. At first, this division of the company was unprofitable; However, this changed with the increasing demand from customers for fast shipments.

Start of own flight operations

In the course of the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978, UPS Airlines saw the opportunity to start its own flight operations. In 1983 Ryan Aviation was commissioned to provide the UPS freighter fleet. Flight operations began at Louisville Airport with Boeing 727-200 freighters . Boeing 757-200F were used as a further aircraft type . The Louisville location was chosen because a large part of the US population can be reached within three hours by flight and the airport is known for few operational restrictions (until today the airport only had to close briefly during a snow storm in 1994).

In 1988, the American Aviation Authority allowed its own flight operations. At that time, there were 41 countries in Europe and Asia in the UPS Airlines route network. With the takeover of Challenge Air Cargo at the end of the 1990s, the South American market was added. With the integration of Russia into the route network and contracts with other shipping companies to deliver parcels to the Middle East and Africa, UPS Airlines became the largest pure cargo airline in the world. The planes were painted in the typical UPS brown color. They were painted with a line across the window on the fuselage and the rudder had the brown basic paint as well as the logo of that time. The word UPS was above the line on the front part of the fuselage.

Bulk goods such as machines, fruits and computer parts have been transported since 1982 . This business area gained importance with the acquisition of Fritiz Corporation by the parent company UPS and the reorganization as UPS Supply Chain Solutions . UPS Supply Chain Solutions was responsible for the complete organization of freight transport for the customers. Only live animals were not transported.

Since there was no flight operation at the weekend, UPS Airways decided to convert eight Boeing 727-100s into Boeing 727-100QCs ( QC = quick changeable). The conversion cost around $ 2.5 million per machine. These are special aircraft that can be used as freighters and as passenger aircraft. The changeover takes three to four hours. Thus, the machines were also in use on the weekend and were not parked unused during these days. The islands of Bahamas and Puerto Plata in Mexico were flight destinations at that time. The machines had 113 seats and had three to eight centimeters more legroom than other American airlines at the time. Most of the passengers booked the flights through tour operators. UPS Airlines carried 50,000 passengers in the first year and around 124,000 in the following year.

In 1997 the International Brotherhood of Teamsters organized a ground workers' strike. Many employees worked 35 hours a week but only had a part-time contract and therefore received no health insurance. The UPS pilots union, Independent Pilots Association, supported the strike. This meant that flight operations were kept to a minimum during the 15-day strike phase. Customers used other parcel service providers and thus UPS lost several million to the strike.

Development since 2000

Because of the emerging competition from airlines with planes that had more than 200 seats, UPS Airlines decided in 2001 to stop passenger flight operations and concentrate again exclusively on freight transport.

In 2003, as part of the parent company's new corporate identity, the paintwork of the fleet was also updated. The brown of the rudder is now also distributed over the rear part of the fuselage and is bordered by a golden border. The logo on the rudder has been replaced with the current one. The lettering is now completely missing on the fuselage. Instead, the advertising message “Worldwide Services” and underneath “synchronizing the world of commerce” has been stuck here.

On February 5, 2007, United Parcel Service announced that 27 new Boeing 767-300ERFs had been ordered. These will be delivered between 2009 and 2012.

In 2008 the airline employed 20,513 people. For 2009 the airline was voted “Cargo Airline of the Year” by the Air Transport World newspaper .

Freight distribution centers

UPS Airlines operates 13 major hubs around the world. With 959 domestic and 763 international flights daily, 400 domestic and 435 international flights are offered. The parcels are pre-sorted in other smaller hubs and flown to the main locations. These flights are mostly operated by small subcontractors. The Louisville International Airport in the US state of Kentucky is the home base ( World Port ) of the cargo airline. Up to 8.4 million parcels can be processed there every day. On average, an aircraft in the UPS fleet takes off or lands from this airport every six minutes. The European hub is located in Germany at Cologne / Bonn Airport , which has a processing capacity of 2.64 million parcels.

Turnstile	Delivery area	Size of the parcel sorting center in m²	Processing capacity per hour	Size of the apron	Parking positions on the apron	Daily flights (average)
Louisville	Worldwide	483.100	350,000 packages	527,000 m²	117	230
Philadelphia	US east coast	063,300	080,000 packages	201,100 m²	025th	058
Ontario	American west coast	047,000	036,000 packages	194,250 m²	022nd	045
Dallas	Midwest USA	030,000	046,000 packages	072,850 m²	017th	045
Rockford	United States	054,400	121,000 packages	202,350 m²	040	040
Columbia	Southeast USA	026,100	041,000 packages	044,500 m²	014th	040
Hartford	Northeast USA	021,100	020,000 packages	014,150 m²	004th	006th
Miami	Southern USA, South and Central America	003,400	006,500 packages	060,050 m²	009	029
Hamilton	Canada	002,900	006,000 packages	019,800 m²	-	024
Cologne / Bonn	Worldwide	030,000	190,000 packages	075,700 m²	064	076
Pampanga	Asia	005,900	007,500 packages	-	-	017th
Hong Kong	Asia	004,100	004,800 packages	-	-	008th
Shanghai	China	092,900	017,000 packages	-	-	014th

fleet

As of May 2020, the UPS Airlines cargo fleet consists of 265 aircraft with an average age of 19.9 years:

Aircraft type	number	ordered	maximum payload	Remarks	image
Airbus A300-600F	52		49-54t	all delivered new
Boeing 747-400F	13		117t	first delivery on June 28, 2007
Boeing 747-8F	15th	13	134t	UPS announced on October 27, 2016 that they had ordered 14 new machines.
Boeing 757-200PF	75		40t	first delivery on September 17, 1987 (all 75 delivered new)
Boeing 767-300ERF	71	6th	58t	Deliveries from October 12, 1995 (all new)
McDonnell Douglas MD-11F	39		94t	none bought new
total	265	19th

Additional aircraft are leased from subcontractors as required (especially during the Christmas season in November and December). According to the airline, all aircraft meet strict noise protection guidelines, both the feeder aircraft and the intercontinental aircraft.

UPS Airlines had an extensive fleet of over 40 Douglas DC-8Fs until 2009 , but these have since been retired.

Incidents

• On February 8, 2006, the Douglas DC-8 with aircraft registration number N748UP burned down at Philadelphia International Airport after a fire broke out in the hold. The cause of the fire could not be conclusively clarified; transported lithium-ion batteries may have played a role.
• On September 3, 2010, a Boeing 747-400F with registration number N571UP crashed on UPS Airlines flight 6 50 minutes after take-off on its return to Dubai Airport just a few kilometers away after a fire broke out in the cargo hold. This aircraft was also loaded with lithium-ion batteries, among other things. Both pilots died in the accident.
• On October 29, 2010, a UPS aircraft on flight UPS17 from Hong Kong picked up cargo from the Middle East and packages from Yemen with a stopover in Dubai. Authorities from the United Arab Emirates, Great Britain and the USA confirmed that these were bombs that went undetected during clearance. The bomb arrived in Cologne-Bonn at 10:56 p.m., was reloaded by UPS and transported on to Great Britain. It could only be withdrawn from service at the British airport in Nottingham.
• On August 14, 2013, an Airbus A300-600F , UPS Airlines Flight 1354 , with the registration number N155UP, crashed into a meadow near Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport in Alabama , USA. The two pilots died.

See also

• List of airlines

Web links

Commons : UPS Airlines  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• UPS website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} UPS buys 27 Boeing cargo planes - A380 inspection is still ongoing in February 2003
2. ↑ ^{a b} UPS: UPS Air Operations Facts ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ UPS: UPS Airlines Honored as 2009 Cargo Airline of the Year February 5, 2009
4. ↑ United Parcel Service (UPS) Fleet Details and History. In: planespotters.net. May 5, 2020, accessed on May 22, 2020 . 
5. ^ Boeing: Orders & Deliveries. In: boeing.com. April 30, 2020, accessed on May 24, 2020 . 
6. ↑ Will UPS save the Boeing 747? In: http://www.faz.net/ . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 27, 2016, accessed on October 27, 2016 . 
7. ↑ accident report DC-8-71 N748UP , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on 9 October 2017th
8. ^ Wiwo.de - Risk of fire in airplanes , August 17, 2006
9. ^ Accident report B-747-400 N571UP , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on October 9, 2017.
10. ↑ Final report of the GCAA , (English, 8.42 MB; PDF)
11. ↑ rundschau-online.de - One bomb, tens of thousands of packages , November 2, 2010
12. ↑ online-presseportal.com - Bombs on cargo planes from FedEx and UPS- continued high alarm in the USA , October 30, 2010
13. ↑ welt.de - Bomb three hours in Germany , November 2, 2010
14. ↑ foxnews.com - Authorities probing cause of UPS jumbo cargo plane crash that killed 2 pilots (English), August 14, 2013