Small is Beautiful

There was a time when the term FedEx was unknown to the world; now it’s much like the verb 'to hoover' - it has become a generic term for small packages. FedEx started as a small package operator in the USA in 1973 and operated from a hub in Memphis, Tennessee. Their unusual concept was to fly every single package into and out of this one hub. So if a shipment was going to New York from Atlanta it still went via Memphis. To begin with many airline people were sceptical of the company’s ability to succeed. Most people working in the airfreight business were quick to say, “It’ll never catch on.”

In 1976 British Caledonian had begun a service to Houston in Texas from London. There were no problems in filling the aircraft from Houston to London with cargo, on account of the plentiful oil spares traffic, there was scant cargo in the other direction. Having read about Federal Express I thought the concept was brilliant and I wrote to their founder and Chief Executive, Fred Smith, and suggested that there might be some mileage in developing a door-to-door small package service across the Atlantic. In 1977 just after Elvis had died I visited Memphis and we began working out the logistics. If people were sceptical of FedEx in America the laughed out loud at the idea of doing it across the Atlantic.

Undaunted I persevered and eventually won the backing of the board for such a scheme. The idea was to offer a pick up of a small package in London, fly it to Houston, where the package would be taken into the FedEx system. From there it would be flown to Memphis and then delivered the next day to the customer’s door. In theory a Monday pick-up in London would be delivered anywhere in America on Wednesday…and so on.

After much planning and organization, mostly against the wishes of the traditional cargo people, the service, which we called ‘Top Priority’, was ready to launch. We decided that we needed an important small package with a bit of kudos attached to it and we came up with the idea of delivering a gold record that had been awarded to Buddy Holly. Maria Elena, his widow lived in Lubbock in Texas and it was duly organized. In order to get some coverage from the press we arranged a breakfast at Gatwick with Tony Blackburn no less, (this was when his celebrity was such that he didn’t need to go into the jungle to get the public’s attention) to send the package on its way. Everything went off fine, we got some PR and for the next couple of days life went on as normal.

Somehow or another the gold disc got lost – it’s never been found. It was an omen. We never could get people excited about the concept; small packages across the Atlantic as far as the great British public were concerned were never going to catch on.

The Lost Box

With all this talk about lost bags it reminded me about a rather more disturbing bit of airline ineptitude. Airlines frequently fly coffins, usually when someone is going to their home country for burial. Sometimes people die when they are abroad and then the body is flown home. Some years ago a family were on holiday in Portugal when the husband sadly died and the coffin was flown home onboard the same plane as his family. When the widow and her children had cleared Customs and Immigration at Gatwick they were taken to the freight shed where a hearse had been arranged to pick up the coffin.

When the family arrived at the warehouse the hearse was there, but unfortunately no coffin. All the freight had been brought into the warehouse from the aircraft but there was absolutely no sign of the coffin. The family were naturally distraught and could not understand how a coffin had just disappeared…nor for that matter could anyone else. Senior managers were dispatched to the freight shed to deal with the situation and promised a thorough investigation. Most important of all they said that they would find the coffin.

Naturally blame fell on the Portuguese loading staff. They had obviously failed to load the coffin or worse still put it on the wrong flight – but to who knows where? Eventually after 48 hours it turned up in Caracas in Venezuela, and the Portuguese were totally innocent. It had been loaded on the aircraft in Lisbon but no one had thought to unload it in London. The coffin had remained on board and gone with the aircraft on its next flight from London to the Venezuelan capital.