Instead of carrying passengers, the world’s largest airline shifts more than 15 billion tonne-kilometres of freight a year, making it the leader in its industry.

Can you guess who the Telegraph call “the world’s biggest airline”?

You might have spotted its windowless planes on the tarmac before – there are 691 of them, twice as many as Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline – and only upon a double take have realised why: the brand name FedEx neatly displayed on its side.

Yup. The “cargo behemoth” was founded in 1971 and uses a number of international hubs in addition to its Memphis “superhub”:

[T]he company flies to more than 375 destinations (Turkish Airlines, which flies to more countries than any other passenger airline, only serves 302), transporting around 5.5million packages every day. That’s as if the entire population of Finland sent a parcel inside 24 hours.

The planes are just like passenger planes, sans seats. The only people on the aircraft are the pilots and maaaaybe a flight engineer.

Many cargo aircraft are decommissioned passenger jets, stripped and repurposed for carrying freight, with some given strengthened flight deck doors so that the crew is not crushed by its cargo in the event of a crash.

Then there are the weird planes:

Called the Airbus Beluga, only five of the “Super Transporters” have ever been built and are used to deliver a myriad of cargo, from chemical tanks to enormous 19th century painting by Eugene Delacroix.

Check this plane inception:

Yum.

While we’re on the subject of planes, you might want to keep an eye on Flight Centre’s Black Friday deals. Their early Black Friday deals have already sold out, and our inside source tells us their next round is going to be just as tasty.

Oooooh, things are getting exciting!

[source:telegraph]