Shifting Ground: FedEx Delivers Relief to Nepal
Interview with Paul Tronsor, Managing Director for FedEx Express Global Operations Control
Last week, two FedEx charter flights delivered 178,000 pounds of relief supplies to the people of Nepal. Aid on those flights included water treatment systems, water chlorinators and storage tanks designed to serve 430,000 people a day, three daily meals for almost 1,700 people for a month and maternity/infant supplies for 5,000 expectant mothers.
The following interview with Paul Tronsor, managing director for FedEx Express global operations control (GOC), describes how FedEx, along with global aid organizations, managed through the shifting landscape to get the right supplies to the right place, at the right time.
Q. Talk about the last two weeks? When did FedEx first get involved in the Nepal relief efforts?
A. When this disaster hit, our Global Citizenship team reached out to relief agencies. FedEx can get packages where you need them, when you need them, but in the case of a disaster, lives depend on the type of aid that is truly needed on the ground. For every disaster it’s different. Water purifiers may be in Delhi, medical supplies in California, people on the ground could need something else. We also immediately looked at staging and delivery options to get the mission completed.
Early on, our Aircraft Dispatchers in GOC predicted Katmandu airport would suffer from weight strain and we had concerns about the runway stability. So we looked at multiple configurations to get the aid in – including driving cargo from India by truck. Our concern there was delivery trucks would get bottlenecked at the border. On the other hand, we had to weigh whether our aircraft could get into Nepal and if there was fuel available there for the return leg.
So it was a true balancing act – how to get in with as much aid as possible and get back out.
As Managing Director for FedEx Express Global Operations Control, Paul Tronsor is responsible for all FedEx trunk aircraft movement worldwide. Global Operations Control has 6 offices, in 5 Countries, on 3 continents and is responsible for FedEx Express network operations and contingency planning in addition to flight dispatch services for the trunk fleet of over 350 aircraft and provides oversight for 647 FedEx aircraft operating around the globe.
