Flying Smart Nets TNT World Record

Actually, TNT was flying Smart cars, 30 of them in a Boeing 747 freighter and on October 23rd, the express delivery company and TopGear magazine loaded all 30 micro cars in 35 minutes and 34 seconds to set a world record.

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the popular Smart fortwo micro car, TopGear magazine's TopGear Italia staged the event to see how many cars it could fit in the belly of a Boeing 747 freighter. Mercedes Benz Italia SpA supplied the cars to TNT's Liege hub for the record-setting attempt.

“One of the critical aspects was to find a suitable time window to try the record, fitting with the arrivals and departures of all the other aircraft scheduled 24 hours, 365 days a year,” said Christine Heine, head of ground operations at TNT Liège Hub, who coordinated the operation. “The take-off time for each TNT aircraft is really imperative, considered its heavy impact on the synchronized network that delivers hundreds of thousands of express parcels anytime, anywhere,” she said.

The seven staff had only three hours to load the smart in the Boeing 747, unload them and load the plane with the goods leaving for Shanghai. “An incredible result, which celebrates at one hand the professionalism of TNT people who respected their mission ‘sure we can’ and at the other Smart fortwo, a special car that in 10 years of life has already obtained many records,” TNT added.