Listen: ATSG and mas expand with A330s

Vallair recently launched a new facility in Southern France and hinted at in-house widebody and narrowbody conversions, but for whom? Cargo Facts spoke with a few STC holders who don't currently have plans to convert at this new site. Apart from Vallair’s news, last week came with major widebody developments from ATSG and mas as both companies look to the A330 to expand their widebody markets. Both are still growing their medium widebody fleets with 767 conversions. In this episode of “Cargo Facts Connect,” Cargo Facts Deputy Editor Jeff Lee and Associate Editor Andrew Crider discuss these issues as well as new 737 operators in a recap of the news for the week ended Feb. 25. A transcript is available below. This transcript has been generated by software and is being presented as is. Some transcription errors may remain. Andrew Crider Hello and welcome to this episode of cargo facts connect the podcast of cargo facts, the newsletter of record for the air cargo and freighter aircraft industries for over 40 years. I'm your host Andrew Crider, associate editor of cargo facts. Jeff Lee And I'm Jeff Lee, deputy editor. Andrew Crider Last week, vallair announced the completion of a new facility in southern France that it says will be able to handle freighter conversions, among other things. It's been a mystery that we would like to solve. The company claims that this facility will be set up for both narrow body and wide body conversions and hinted that it would relocate some conversion projects here. We've had some discussions with a few STC holders who told us that they currently don't plan to use the French conversion facility. So we haven't been able to nail down exactly what vallair intends to do. Jeff Lee For me, that's interesting, isn't it because Vallair was of course the first customer for both EFW and 321 precision conversions, A321 freighter conversion programs. And valor has so far taken another A321 P two F so they've got three. But since then, several of it's a 321 we had expected to see heading into conversion have not really moved so we don't really know what's going on there. Andrew Crider For now, we can only wait and see what Vallair has in store. It's likely it's already been had deals with customers lined up and some other activities that Vallair facility will house. Beyond speculation. We have some really, very real new news from Airbus and Boeing white, the wide body market last week. Jeff Lee Yes. Particularly with Airbus because ATSG said it has assigned nine more a 330 P2F conversion slots with EFW and ATsG already had 20 slots that they announced last year and those run from 2023 to 2025. So this really solidifies the company's position as the largest a 330 conversion customer for EF W. At least for now. A couple of interesting things, all of the these new nine new slots run from the beginning of 2026 to the end of 2026. So you know E FW is now selling snots for at least 2026 and beyond. And that's even with all the conversion lines that they're expecting to start using pretty soon in China and the US. And you know ATSG being the largest customer. They've, you know, few recent announcements with EFW and A330 already so earlier this month, we had CDB aviation topping up its order book, and they now hold 14 slots. DHL Of course, the first 330 300 PSF customer already has eight in operation. And they have three more in Dresden undergoing conversion or about to undergo conversion. Another interesting thing is that ATSG has now secured commitments for 14 of those initial 20 slots from four different customers outside North America. And this is exactly the kind of international growth that ATSG had been hoping for and then entering the ad 30 conversion market. This is similar to CDB because CDB now has started signing commitments for its aircraft, you know with two new customers in two new PT 330 P two F customers in China. At the same time, though, ATSG is still bullish on the 767 platform and holds slots with both AI and Boeing. In fact, the company is the largest 7673 to lessor. And they told us that they expect the first Boeing induction later this year. And of course they've got Additional placements lined up this year with DHL star air. And possibly even customers like Raya airways in Malaysia and astral aviation in Kenya. Andrew Crider This is a big deal. It's huge. In fact, it just highlights the growing role that the a 330 will play in the freighter conversion market. Case in point. Last week, mas air launched its rebranding around the A 330 200 P two F. They accepted it in January. Mas currently also expects three other a 330s in conversion with EFW that we know of one more dash 202 larger dash three hundreds, but the airline aims to add at least several more a 330s to its fleet in the next couple of years. Part of that is due to the availability of the A 330 feedstock, but it also is because of the need to eventually replace some of the older medium wide bodies out there. One interesting thing to point out is that one source told us that the price of the A 321 was almost as high as an A 330. Jeff Lee That is just shocking. And that's just a reflection of how crazy the market is at the moment. That being said, we of course continue to see seven three sevens serve as the entry point into the cargo market for some passenger airlines. Earlier this month, we talked about Jeju air in South Korea. And last week we also had Mesa airlines in the US which just took its first dry leased 737 400 that carrier is already a CMI partner for DHL and has two DHL 7374 hundreds in operation. But this is the first 737 in mesas own colors and the airline intends to use that aircraft both as a spare for DHL and for its own ACMI services. So in some ways, this is a bit reminiscent of IAero airways, which was the first 737 800 CMI partner for DHL and now it's several but it then proceeded to dry these 737 800 freighters of its own and intends to grow its freighter fleet. Andrew Crider Speaking of 737 next generations, like every week, we have more heading into and leaving conversion, but we're also seeing some interesting and surprising new customers and operators. But we'll leave that for later as we try to uncover the stories behind those. In closing, both Jeff and I are closely monitoring the recent conflict in Eastern Europe as they affect operations activity of carriers around the region, particularly Antonov airlines. Until we have further information on these dramatic developments. It goes without saying that both Jeff and I are eagerly awaiting peace in the region. And on that note, that's it for today. For those of you tuning in to this episode of cargo Facts Connect thank you. For more multimedia content like this, check out cargofacts.com and search cargo Facts connect on iTunes Spotify. Join us again next time Subscribe to Cargo Facts Connect on iTunes or Spotify , or download the episode on Transistor . Cargo Facts EMEA will take place LIVE May 9-11 in Dubai. Learn more and register.

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