To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the smart car, the most compact car in the world, TopGear Italia, the Italian edition of the leading U.K. magazine and BBC programme, wondered how many could be fit in the belly of a Boeing B747, one of the world’s largest airplanes.
The 30 smart fortwo were provided by Mercedes-Benz Italia SpA and Mercedes-Benz Belgium Luxembourg SA. Christine Heine, head of ground operations at TNT Liège Hub, who coordinated the operation, said: "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 on 24, 365 days a year. 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.”
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. The full report on the event is in the December issue of TopGear Italia.
Pictures can be found here: http://coppermine.luchtzak.be/thumbnails-731.html
TNT press release, Turin/Rome/Amsterdam, 20 November 2008