Fly Smart (Guinness Record) [slow: heavy pictures incl.]

PerryA · 11-20-2008, 06:39 AM

Just received this press release. Will post photos if I can get them:

TNT Press release
30 smart cars and one TNT Boeing 747:
Guinness World Record broken!

TopGear breaks Guinness World Record

Turin / Rome / Amsterdam, 20 November, 2008 – Loading 30 smart cars in a Boeing 747 in less than 60 minutes. A new Guinness Book record for the fastest loading of cars onto aircraft has been set on 23 October 2008 by the express delivery company TNT and the car magazine TopGear at TNT’s air hub in Liège, Belgium. A team of seven people managed to fit 30 smart fortwo in a TNT B747 in 35 minutes and 34 seconds.
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.