It is a cold, wet january night at the world's busiest cargo airport, Memphis International, which serves as the central air hub of FedEx's vast global delivery network. The rain has been steady throughout the day, and the executives who manage the FedEx Express airline operation have been monitoring the air temperature closely. A dip below freezing means icy conditions at MEM that could be severely disruptive to FedEx's nightly sort, in which 140 freighter aircraft land and are unloaded and reloaded before taking off to deliver an average of 1.2 million parcels sorted here nightly, all between about 11 p.m. and 2:30 a.m. As 11 p.m. approaches on Jan. 5, FedEx officials breathe a sigh of relief. The air temperature over MEM stays at 33 deg. F, one precarious degree above freezing. Just miles north of the airport the temperature has fallen below freezing, icing roadways. But at MEM the sort goes on unimpeded. Twenty deicing trucks sit out on the tarmac as a precaution.
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