American Airlines delivers lime just in time to Canada for Cinco de Mayo holiday

April 27, 2018: American Airlines Cargo has undertaken lime delivery project to meet demand during the peak growing season, just in time for the Cinco de Mayo holiday. The airline has transported more than 227,000 pounds (103 tonnes) of the green citrus fruit from Brazil to Canada through multiple shipments, this past month.

To put it in perspective, that’s two slices of lime per Torontonian or around 1 million margaritas. And, based on an average diameter of a lime, if you stacked these limes end-to-end, they would reach over 79,000 feet—twice a normal cruising altitude!

The limes were transported from both Sao Paulo (GRU) and Rio de Janeiro (GIG) to New York (JFK), utilising American‘s widebody, Boeing 777-200 and 777-300 equipment. From there, they were placed in refrigerated trucks for the onward journey to two Canadian cities, Toronto and Vancouver.

In a normal year, the Canadian market sources its lemons and limes from Mexico, but this year a low harvest has resulted in a much reduced crop. Consumers in the food service industry, notably hotels and restaurants, are now turning to Brazilian limes because production is more reliable and not as susceptible to the weather.

American’s nonstop flights between Brazil and the US offer consumers quick and easy access to the tart fruit famous for its use in margaritas and on tacos during the popular Cinco de Mayo celebrations.

“The global market for citrus fruits is changing and while limes move across our international network on a year-round basis, these large scale movements to Canada were something special,” said Lorena Sandoval, American's managing director of Sales for Florida, Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America.