Memphis International Airport

Memphis International is the world's second-largest cargo airport by freight tonnage and has held the top global cargo ranking for most of the past three decades — a standing driven almost entirely by a single tenant: FedEx Express, whose 880-acre "SuperHub" processes 400,000+ packages per hour at peak during the overnight sort. While MEM's passenger service (233 destinations via 43 airlines in the route graph, weighted heavily toward cargo carriers) has contracted since Delta's 2013 dehubbing, the airport's raison d'être is freight: roughly 4.5M tonnes annually, placing it ahead of Anchorage and behind only Hong Kong. Four runways — 11,120 ft (3,389 m), 9,320 ft (2,841 m), 9,000 ft (2,743 m), and 8,946 ft (2,727 m) — are configured to handle the nightly FedEx wave, in which 150+ aircraft land within a 90-minute window, unload and reload at the SuperHub, and depart before sunrise. This creates the unusual profile of an airport whose peak-hour movements occur between 22:00 and 03:00 rather than in daylight commercial banks. Cargo carriers UPS, DHL, and Amazon Air also operate from MEM. The airport sits at 341 ft (104 m) elevation on a 3,900-acre (1,578 ha) site south of downtown Memphis. Its single modernized terminal consolidates Concourses A, B, and C following a 2021 "Concourse B Modernization" project that reduced the airport's passenger footprint while adding higher ceilings and wider seating areas. Passenger service is anchored by American, Delta, Southwest, United, and ultra-low-cost carriers serving leisure destinations; MEM's role in the global aviation ranking is defined by its cargo position, not its commercial seat count.