Airlines gear up for COVID-19 vaccine distribution

Months before anyone knew which of the coronavirus vaccine candidates would pull ahead or when they'd be available, airlines were trying to figure out how to transport doses around the world.

The industry will play a vital role in moving billions of doses aboard hundreds of flights in the months ahead, putting underused planes and crews to work while circulating the very medicine that airlines hope will get people to book tickets again.

But the flights represent just one segment of a massive, global relay race in which airlines will have to be ready to move at a moment's notice.

One of the biggest challenges for airlines has been ensuring that vaccines are transported at frigid temperatures.

Pfizer's must be stored at an incredibly low minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit. Moderna's can be kept at a more easily managed minus 4 degrees. | An employee works to prepare refrigerated containers.

But aviation authorities limit how much dry ice can be carried on planes because it turns to gas, making the air potentially toxic for pilots and crews.

Unloading cargo at O’Hare airport. | United said it had been laying the groundwork to ship vaccines since the summer.

The scale and urgency of circulating the coronavirus vaccine are unlike anything airlines and other logistics companies have seen before.

An employee works on refrigerated containers at KLM cargo terminal at Schiphol Airport as the Dutch airline company will distribute vaccines against the new coronavirus.

An American Airlines cargo plane is unloaded at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. | American Airlines Cargo is the largest facility for pharmaceutical products on the East Coast, and could soon be used to store COVID-19 vaccines.

Workers inside a temperature-controlled area of United Airlines’s cargo facility at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. The airline industry will play a vital role in moving millions of vaccine doses, putting underused planes and crews idled by the pandemic to work.