Farnell delivery routing

[Geo]

My jiffy bag (A4 size) from Farnell arrived on time today by UPS but it seemed to take the pretty route via Germany - twice ...

My Address, U.K.------- 25/02/2011 13:05 Delivered

----------------------- 25/02/2011 8:29 Out for Delivery

----------------------- 25/02/2011 7:30 Arrival Scan

----------------------- 25/02/2011 7:08 Departure Scan

----------------------- 25/02/2011 6:12 Arrival Scan Castle Donnington, U.K. 25/02/2011 5:21 Departure Scan Koeln, Germany -------- 25/02/2011 3:50 Departure Scan Castle Donnington, U.K. 25/02/2011 2:16 Arrival Scan Koeln, Germany -------- 25/02/2011 2:02 Departure Scan Mechelen, Belgium ----- 24/02/2011 22:35 Departure Scan

----------------------- 24/02/2011 15:35 Export Scan

----------------------- 24/02/2011 15:35 Origin Scan Belgium --------------- 24/02/2011 10:04 Order Processed: Ready for UPS

[The Natural Philosopher]

I trump hat with a parcel from New Mexico, that spent a week getting to Toronto, where it sat for 4 weeks, before finally being airfreighted to the UK..total door to door about 8 weeks.

[Nightjar]

Correcting for time difference that suggests it took 1h 14m to travel from Cologne to Castle Donnington but only 34 minutes to be put back on the aircraft, sent back to Cologne and to leave again. The first is reasonable, but the second is not. The aircraft was probably still on the ground at East Midlands airport at 3:50 CET.

Colin Bignell

[Theo Markettos]

It seems rather optimistic that it went from being scanned at Koeln, loaded onto the plane, flown to EMA, unloaded and scanned in 1h14. I suspect it was flown straight from Brussels to EMA, with the Koeln scans being spurious.

Theo

[Nightjar]

You may be right. However:

The Castle Donnington depot is next to the airport and I presume there would be one on or adjacent to the airport at Cologne.

The distance between the two airports is 378 miles.

UPS fly their own aircraft, mostly A300s, which have a cruising speed of

515 mph.

Round those to 400 miles and 500 mph, to allow for folllowing airways and for losses due to take off and landing, and the flight time would be

48 minutes.

I don't see 1h 14 m as impossible with fully automatic sorting equipment in use, even assuming they log parcels in individually, rather than simply logging the arrival of a container that the package has been loaded into at Cologne.

Nevertheless, whichever route it took, the second departure from Cologne is, I am sure, spurious.

Colin Bignell