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.
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.