The question is did he mark it as hazardous material? I'm sure UPS would charge more for that, vs. just a ground package. If he just asked for ground delivery, than UPS might ship it by air if it was more convenient.
As far as I can tell without reading pages of court stuff the packages were marked clearly. UPS uses aircraft on shipments from/to Alaska for “ground” and his shipments wound up on the aircraft. Like I said upthread they guy needs to sue UPS. More on the story:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=17088