To the Wave Discussion and some questions about who is where or how the waves are even "made" - I would call it "educated speculation" based on at least 3-4 years of pre-order history and how some of us have tracked these flights. Sorry,
@TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️ - not trying to contradict you, just trying to add some (or a lot) of detail to help answer the questions. ☺️
All our iPhones can't leave on the same plane at the same time, so they naturally must go out in waves or batches.
Saturday scans were centered around common label creation, depart facility, arrived facility, departed, etc. And, we thought since those phones with history like that are at the front of the pack, they might depart mainland China today. But that doesn't seem to have happed YET (it's just about 2pm Sunday as I'm typing)...so they could leave today.
The scans today were label creations and nothing past that and they were at about 3 different times in the morning (China Time). We haven't seen them leave FoxConn and enter the bonded area for inspection/customs at Zhengzhou yet. So the assumption is that the phones getting scanned today are Wave 2 and possibly Wave 3.
There is a possibility that these waves, as we have them labeled now, may leapfrog ahead or even break up, depending on how they get scanned. Eventually, waves may be renamed as we get departure flights out of China. So we may end up starting to say we're on xxx UPS Flight, or we're on the HHMM Flight to Tokyo or Anchorage, or Seoul. We've even seen later flights flights start catching earlier flights...planes breaking down in Alaska and delaying transport.
They all end up at the UPS World Hub at Louisville. Some phones will and must get there earlier than others. If you have a 9/22 delivery date, I think we have mostly seen that Apple drives UPS to meet that commitment and even speed up some later delivery dates to make it on launch day, too.
