Originally Posted by
STN Ramp Rat
The EMA-IND route is only at EMA due to a shortage of night slots at STN. FedEx have had night slot issues at STN for some time and previously operated a EWR-STN-CDG-EWR service that should have operated vis STN on the return to the US but due to a lack of night slots had to operate directly to the US on the return. eventually when it became aparent that the issue would not be resolved the service became a EWR-CDG-EWR route.
With regards to the variety of points of origin for flights to CDG remember FedEx is a parcels service and its all about the box, the aircraft will go wherever the box’s originate or terminate. A prime example of this is with DHL at Luton, they cannot get LHR slots for the London inbound sort so the flights operate to LTN, in the evening the flights position empty to LHR to collect the outbound London sort because LHR is closer to the sort location than LTN.
Neither the cancellation of the STN stop on the FX5047 EWR-CDG-(STN)-EWR or the decision to route the CDG-EMA-IND 777 via EMA had nothing to do with night slot availability. The 777 into EMA is a “late to late” flight offering a later drop off and a later next day delivery commitment and goes into one of the new response sorts (sunrise) in IND. It has a 120K allocation ex CDG and 40K ex EMA. There is already a 3x weekly CDG-STN-IND MD11 that goes into the regular IND night sort.