On Tuesday, FedEx unveiled a phenomenal retro livery on N884FD, one of the company’s Boeing 777-200Fs. The livery was released on what would have been the 82nd birthday of Frederick Smith, the founder of FedEx.
This coincides with the renaming of the Memphis International Airport to the Frederick W. Smith International Airport to honor Smith. FedEx has a massive presence in Memphis. Not only is the company’s world headquarters in the city, but the Memphis Airport is it’s biggest cargo hub processing 400 daily flights, making it the busiest cargo airport in America and third-busiest in the world after Hong Kong and Shanghai.
I feel like this is one of the best-done retro liveries we’ve seen in long time. The purple looks really amazing with the old-fashioned FedEx typeface. The jet itself is named “Rosie,” after Frederick Smith’s granddaughter who was born just before he died.
Painting it took about three weeks in New Iberia, Louisiana. It returned to Memphis as FX1944, to honor the year of their founder’s birth. It officially entered revenue service with the new livery later in the afternoon with service to El Paso.
