I don't think the departure scans are related to the takeoff times other than they occur before the plane takes off. I think the "departure scan" time relates to the time the item is scanned and loaded on the aircraft. Not when the aircraft departs.
You are right.
I am a very knowledgable person on shipping as I have several family members who use both Fedex and UPS on a daily business for their work, that involves both domestic and international shipments on a daily basis.
When I order from Amazon, or from anywhere, for an express or "air" service, flightaware.com can almost always be used as a great source for what flight your package is liable to take.
If you look at a "departure scan" on your package's status (I suggest using iship.com, packagetrackr.com, packagemapping.com, or junecloud - they all update faster than the UPS and Fedex sites), you can look on flightaware and check city to city (for example, for some people their iPads are being sent from a city about an hour northwest of Shenzhen (Guangzhou), while others may show Shenzhen or "Chek Lap Kok" (Chek Lap Kok is Hong Kong Intl Airport (VHHH Identifier)).
By looking at those times and then at the flight times on flightaware, they should be relatively close. This is because (I know several upper and lower managers in UPS, from local offices to ramp workers to corporate workers) - and its pretty easy to deduce - At the ramp, a manifset is scanned that is received from the previous sorting facility. This manifest lists all packages in a certain container that are scheduled to depart and be loaded onto that aircraft. As the workers load the aircraft, they are scanned and stored. After the loading is complete and the ground crew makrs themselves "complete" on loading that aircraft, the UPS corporate center in KY (also KSDF aka Louisville Intl Airport) receives those manifests and the corresponding tracking numbers, and updates it on their servers.
NOW when using iship.com, it pulls pretty much the rawest info I have seen out there from UPS and Fedex. Sometimes so much so that when the departure scan comes up, it will actually say "departure Scan (city), enroute to (next city)."
So yea. I will put a post up in a bit explaining and answering some questions people have had about the shipping.
in particular the "It will be delivered tomorrow" thing from UPS. To answer it briefly, the people in the Intl dept. have no idea of ANY requests for hold at sort facility from Apple. Plus those "estimates" of delivery are only given because they are "pretending" to send a package on UPS.com using the callers info and then spitting out the estimate based on normal factors and NORMAL shipping methods. Apple is working directly with UPS, for sure, to coordinate, reserve space, and ensure that they meet their demands on planes, trucks, and to meet the delivery date on April 3rd. The reason being these packages haven't cleared customs yet in Anchorage (if to the US). A UPS On-Call mid-shipment hold can ONLY be requested after a package has been cleared through customs. And at that point they can either hold at dest. sort facilities or at the local Memphis hub, depnding on UPS's system availability and what flights those packages need to take to get on time.
Some people's packages (like my own) have not even been updated in the UPS system with package information yet. That is why some people don't see any info - delivery date, weight, destination, or anything. Because of the massive amount of packages, UPS is accepting the shipments directly from Apple in bulk, then processing them either at Hong Kong or Guangzhou, and ultimately getting them out of the country.
ALSO realize Apple has to send out ITS OWN iPads for retail, so that is why many people haven't gotten updates yet. It seems that Apple is preparing "to home" shipments in bulk in the early evening, and then shipping out their own. This is probably why, so don't worry.
Again, I will post later answering some of the most common questions here, but here here to anyone who pre-ordered!
P.S. If anyone has any questions or concerns, feel free to PM me your tracking updates (no I don't need your tracking number, and I don't want it because I respect your privacy). Just copy the info from www.iship.com (click on TrackIt) and I will answer them. I am not a genius nor a UPS employee BUT I am more than willing to help. Thanks!
I figured it would have had a tracking number by now unless there is a delay in updating the sipping info
