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When most people envision the world's largest airlines, they almost always picture international legacy carriers that operate massive global networks. Airlines like United Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, and Ryanair come to mind, all of which operate thousands of daily flights from their major operating bases. There are many ways to measure the size and prominence of an airline, and, as a result, one will typically find that there will be different carriers rising to the top depending on what statistics you may choose to evaluate.
For example, suppose you choose to measure by any number of financial metrics, including the revenue generated by a carrier and the airline's overall market capitalization. In that case, there are no airlines that rise beyond US-based legacy carrier Delta Air Lines. In terms of other metrics, including the total seat capacity offered by an airline, the number of daily flights, and the number of employees, American Airlines will rise to the top. In terms of destinations served and fleet size, United Airlines will be the largest.
There is, however, one metric where none of these airlines ever rank as the world's largest. Despite having massive international cargo divisions (ones which have also grown massively since COVID), none of these airlines can offer more freight transporting capacity than US-based freight carrier FedEx, one of the oldest companies in the air cargo market. In this article, we will take a deeper look at FedEx and its history and evaluate how the company was able to become the world's largest cargo carrier.
