98.5 tons of holiday-rush packages stop in Alaska

ANCHORAGE -- The distinctive shape of a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 tri-jet appears out of the darkness and lumbers onto the UPS cargo ramp at Anchorage International Airport on a particularly cold December evening.

Recently arrived from Osaka, Japan, as flight UPS81, bundled-up ramp workers hustle out to meet the jet, which will continue on to the company’s home base in Louisville in just over two hours.

As the engines shut down and the parking brake is set, the race to get the airplane and its 98.5 tons of holiday-rush packages back into the air begins. Cleaning crews service the cockpit and crew-rest areas. Mechanics check the engines and top off the oil. Meals for the next crew are shuttled on board while 22,000 gallons of fuel are being added for the next flight.

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Ramp workers open the MD-11's giant cargo door and begin a careful ballet. Bedroom-sized air cargo containers  -- destined for other places in the U.S., or which simply are not as time sensitive -- are pulled off and stored nearby to await their next flight. New containers from jets that arrived earlier in the day, typically from elsewhere in Asia, are loaded on.

The jet’s new crew boards an hour before departure, running pre-flight checks and verifying everything is good to go. Two hours and thirty-five minutes later, the airplane is airborne once again; bound for Kentucky.

The bustling scene is repeated an average of 14 times a day during the holiday cargo rush, which runs from Black Friday to New Year’s Eve. Compared to its normal schedule, UPS says it has already operated 100 extra flights through Anchorage in November. December looks to be equally busy.

“It’s an all hands on deck time of year,” UPS spokesperson Jim Mayer said during a recent tour of the facility.

The MD-11 makes its final scheduled passenger flight

During the holiday shipping stretch, UPS anticipates delivering over 700 million packages. Put another way, it means that if your holiday gifts started in Asia, the odds are good that they first passed through Anchorage en route to your doorstep.

That Alaskan stopover might seem strange since the company operates widebody jets like the Boeing 747, which can easily fly non-stop from Asian destinations – such as those in China and Japan – to much of the mainland U.S.  But it’s not quite that simple when those planes are packed full of cargo.

“We are not capable of making the flight full,” said Capt. Scott Jarman, the Anchorage Assistant Chief Pilot for UPS.

“It’s an efficiency thing. If you come out of Asia and you want to fly non-stop, you take just such a huge payload hit” to do so, adds Mayer, noting the capacity of a 747-400 can be reduced by as much at 35% to fly the longer non-stop options.  “You’re leaving a lot of packages behind just because you want to fly nonstop,” he said.

Which is another way of saying it’s a money thing.

“Nobody’s paying you to carry gas,” Anchorage International Airport manager John Parrott said during a phone interview. “A typical 747-400 can put on an additional 100,000 pounds of cargo by stopping in Anchorage,” added Parrott, estimating that can translate into an extra $100,000 gross earnings on every flight.

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For a carrier like UPS, which operates several of that particular jet type into and out of Anchorage every day, the extra cargo capacity can translate into tens -- even hundreds -- of millions of dollars in earnings every year.

Anchorage’s strategic location places it within 9.5 flight hours of 90% of the industrialized world, making it an ideal stop between North America and Asia, according to Parrott.

“Beijing, Moscow, Frankfurt, Mexico City, Paris – all equally reachable,” he said.

Anchorage also boasts another advantage specific to freight operators there.

Cargo parcels arriving to the U.S. via Anchorage don’t have to clear customs inspections there, but rather at their final downstream destinations. That speeds up the cargo process in Anchorage, allowing airlines to quickly transfer air cargo containers from one plane to another -- or from one airline to another -- while still ensuring parcels eventually go through the necessary customs checks.

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Anchorage's location and its cargo-friendly procedures have made it a popular stop for freight operators. Dozens of cargo carriers, from household names like UPS and FedEx to lesser-known airlines such as Centurion Air Cargo or Yangtze River Express, are among those flying the roughly 70 widebody cargo jets that pass through Anchorage from points around the world on an typical day.

During the holiday season, that number balloons to a 80 to 85 jets per day, Parrott said.

That traffic has helped lift Anchorage into the fifth busiest air cargo airport by weight in the world, and second in the United States, with over 2.5 million tons passing through annually. About a third of that total comes from the holiday season alone, said Parrott.

And as the holiday season nears its peak later this month, there's a good chance many of this year's stockings will be stuffed with goods that came through Anchorage.

Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren is a Seattle-based photojournalist and aviation writer and a contributor to Ben Mutzabaugh's Today in the Sky blog. You also can follow Jeremy on Twitter at @photoJDL.

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