FedEx flightplan oddities...

Hey there! Just a quick question about something Ive been noticing…

Around the same time every day FedEx has a huge push out of Memphis that lasts for a couple hours. However, it seems like very few of these flights actually file flight plans in advance. The majority of flights just pop up as “departed” without ever having a flight plan shown on the “scheduled departures” page. You can see most flights have identical scheduled and actual times of departure, seeming to show that the flight plan is essentially getting pushed through the moment that the aircraft gets airborne. You can also see that the route shown is “n/a”, despite there being a well defined route showing on the map. Again, this just seems to solidify the idea that FedEx’s flight plans are being filed and opened “on the fly” instead of in advance.

Does anyone around here know what sort of routine FedEx uses for filing their flight plans? Do they use some strange method that other airlines don’t?

It could be to keep their schedules as closed off as possible due to competitiveness with freight operations like FedEx. I do not believe FedEx publishes their schedules on their website either.

www2.alpa.org/fdx/jumpseat/ shows FedEx’s schedules