With the 2021 Holiday Season quickly approaching and demand still high, Sony has reportedly started utilizing more aggressive, more expensive means of making sure one country can get an ample supply of PS5s into real consumers' hands in time.
First reported by UK publication The Sun and confirmed by VGC, Sony has chartered three Boeing 747s in the last week from Korean Air Cargo, filled them with pallets of PS5s, and began flying them to the UK. One tracked flight originated from Tianjin, China and arrived at Heathrow International Airport on Monday. Other flights purportedly landed in the UK on Monday, October 25, and Thursday, October 28.
Each plane is said to be able to fit 50 pallets of PS5s. When they arrived in the UK, they are then loaded into articulated lorries to be shipped to stores or held in warehouses. These are seemingly the same size as a Walmart container truck in the US. However, it is reported that only three pallets can fit into a truck and The Sun claims there were up to 12 lorries needed to empty one plane.
The math doesn't match up there so maybe it required even more lorries than that or they manage to squeeze an extra one into each truck. It can be assumed that Sony has flown in tens of thousands of PS5s to the UK in the last week with another two flights expected later this month to make sure that there are plenty of PS5 consoles in the country for the holiday rush. The company also has projected that it will ship 14.5 million consoles by the end of the Fiscal Year 2021.
Usually, PS5s would travel by sea as it's less expensive to do so, but "urgency" is the theme for Sony. There are no reports of the same happening in the US, but there has been a TikTok video circulating of a Walmart Warehouse filled with PS5s in supposed preparation for the holiday season. There has also been a recent uptick in PS5 restocking news from the likes of GameStop and Walmart, as well as UK retailers like Argos and GAME.
There is some talk that there could be a drought after the holiday season as Sony goes back to shipping consoles by sea. But with Horizon Forbidden West coming out then Sony may either keep air freight going, or plan for that situation in advance to stave off another PS5 shortage. With Sony taking a visibly aggressive approach to getting as many PS5 consoles to retailers for the winter, it is now up to retailers to have the means to get consoles into the hands of real gamers and not get them poached by scalpers.