Listen: The Queen comes back for another dance

It may seem almost unbelievable, but even now more 747 freighters are still only just taking to the skies again for the first time after long-term storage. In this week’s episode of Cargo Facts Connect, Cargo Facts Editor Jeff Lee and Associate Editors Andrew Crider and Robert Luke discuss a couple more tidbits from Farnborough. They then look at recent 767 developments before turning to the Queen of the Skies. 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 Carter, associate editor of cargo facts. Robert Luke And I'm Robert Luke, associate editor at cargo Facts. Jeff Lee And I'm Jeff Lee, editor of cargo facts. Andrew Crider We begin today with mention of more news from Farnborough that we weren't exactly able to cover last week. A company called hybrid air vehicles unleashed their new design for the air lander 50, with some impressive partnerships from AECOM to back it up the Airlander 50 as opposed to the their previous model, the Airlander 10 is designed specifically for logistics and freight transport, and will be able to carry a payload of 50 to 60 tonnes it will be able to move more cargo and people in point to point and its uses this Zeppelin like futures, to have larger scale airfreight. This is one of the many new forms of technology that's going to be flying autonomously with in using more drone technology that we saw from Farnborough. And I wanted to, on that note, give a special shout out to the folks at Air dialogue who sat down with us and gave us a lot of very good in depth content that we'll be showing in our magazine coming up next week. But moving on to news from this week, I was very interested to see Ethiopian select the A 350 1000 passenger aircraft. Robert, what do you think this means for their freighter fleet if they're going to be moving on to the Airbus while expanding with Boeing Freighters? Robert Luke You know, that's a very interesting question. Because, you know, from just doing the actual contact with the few sources through Boeing that they were still waiting for the finalization of the agreement with Ethiopian. And in the past, we all know the majority, or 100% of Ethiopians fleet has been predominantly Boeing aircraft for many years. So I still have my eyes and ears open to see what their decision will finally be. But I'm not going to be too surprised that they decided to go with that a 350 freighter. And with that being said, Jeff, what are your thoughts on this whole unrecognized or better yet? Immediate twist and turn of action from them? Jeff Lee Yeah, I mean, let me just say that, of course, Ethiopian already has a pretty large fleet of a three fifty 900s. And this was, you know, them expanding into the longer version, which not to play it down. I mean, this is still pretty important. And of course, as we know, the A350 Freighter is more akin to the 1000 than the 900. But it is interesting. And when we spoke to the Ethiopian CEO at Farnborough, he said that they were basically still evaluating between the two models. I will also note that we caught a glimpse of a Boeing triple seven dash 8 F model in the Boeing press conference room in Ethiopian colors. And, of course, that will mean we were very curious. We thought that was an indication of something, but it turned out not to be the case. Perhaps Boeing was just a bit too hopeful. Or there was no trying to find a nicer way to get things moving along more quickly than they did. But yeah, it is pretty interesting that they had a model prepared for a potential signing, one would guess, but it never got put into use. But, you know, Ethiopian is a pretty interesting carrier, when it comes to their freighters because they basically have, you know, some of every type, it seems like, we know that the expanding into the q four hundreds of conversion. They said they're probably going to look at getting more seven three sevens. They have more triple sevens on the way and they have converting 376 sevens of their own. And in fact, that first one is pretty close to being complete at the room facility down in Addis Ababa. Andrew Crider Not to stretch too far away from it. The larger Boeing wide bodies i i thought it was very interesting to see Ethiopian expand their for your fleet or signal that they would expand their freighter fleet with the with the dash eight I think there's been a lot of hype about the battle the equals of a 350 versus triple seven dash eight F but I'm going to Forsee a battle between the dash eight and the ATR freighters onto the turbo prop market and ATR had their first conference during Farnborough and forecasted that there was going to be a increase in the demand for their freighter over the next several years. So I'll be interested to see how that turns out. And you'll always see the latest coverage of the ATR first dash eight orders and conversions on our website cargo facts.com. Robert Luke And don't forget to include the E jets. I think they're going to enter that market and register up some competition as well. Just wanted to interject that sorry. Andrew Crider No, no, that's That's it. I'm really happy you did because that's a that's a great point. That's a it's a new freighter type that's entering the market, and Embraer seems very excited about it. And they said that the first customer for their new E jet type, that'd be Nordic aviation capital had found their first operator, but I want to move back to not Ethiopian, but to the 767 Because I believe that we had a bunch of 767 news this week, didn't we, Robert? Robert Luke Yes, Andrew. And I mean, it's it's really really amazing to see that these aircraft continued to have a long winded capability to extend their their lifeline here as airframes, as contrary to public opinion. The seven six sevens are not on decline and continue to show signs of increasing life as Maersk recently fluids freshly built 767 300 freighter from Boeing to Miami to begin operations with Amerijet which has been ramping up their 767 fleet over Well, recently over the last couple of years, and they still have aims to try to meet their fleet count of 28 aircraft which will include the seven five and seven six sevens as their main fleet line operating aircraft for their services. UPS recently acquired an additional 767 300 for conversion that will be converted at the Boeing facilities as well as the second largest US freight expediter told my colleague Andrew scoop Crider that they are always sourcing the market for potential assets to expand its fleet capabilities. The seven six sevens twin brother to 757 continues to also show signs of extended life as a freighter with the recent unit 25397 going to miat Mongolian airlines this week, as both twin engine wide bodies continue to defy farther time. Another Boeing airframe seems to do the same thing and regenerate more lives than a cat, the 747, which my editor Jeff will go ahead and provide some more of his analysis on why that quiet engine Frieder always appears to be on the comeback contrail if you see if I'm listening. Jeff Lee Yeah, it is super interesting. And in fact, even two years ago, we started seeing all these reactivations of seven, four sevens older seven, four sevens that had been stored for years and years. And you know, it just this week, pictures emerged of a 1985 Vintage a 747 200 a factory 200 ad and been stored at the GMF aero Asia facility in Jakarta for almost 10 years. And so now, it's been seen in a new coat of paint with the my freighter titles now my Freighter appears to be an Uzbekistan based company, we've reached out to them. I hope we get some commentary from them on just you know the reasons and you know what the process was like to basically get their hands on this 747 and reactivate it. But this company doesn't seem to have any Frieighters of its own right now. So again, we're seeing another yet another company getting their hands on a large wide body pretend like the central seven for Own controlled, what must be own controlled operations. And you know, this reminds me of the this because this isn't, it seems the other 200 wasn't doing 100 that arrived in Jakarta cup a few weeks ago that was the white walker 747 200 that we talked about. But it isn't just the two hundreds, and there are still believe it or not 7474 hundreds that are resurfacing and coming back into service. Very recently, actually several days ago. One of the 2x China Airlines 747 400 EFS production for hundreds that had been stored at Victorville for again, close to 10 years. We wrote about this when they were brought out of the desert. And it seemed like they were getting ready to enter service. Now, one of these has actually just started flying with air, Atlanta, Icelandic. The other is undergoing heavy maintenance in Taipei. But it seems like it's going to be ready soon and that one is also going to be flying with air Atlanta, Icelandic. These two freighters are being leased by jet 1x, an interesting company that has been reactivating all kinds of seven four sevens for cargo operations. Additionally, another 747 Freighter, this time 1992 Vintage 400 BDSF that stopped flying with Asiana Airlines in South Korea earlier this year. We also covered that story. And they said that they had returned it or that they were intending to return it to aersale. But this aircraft went to again went to Jakarta recently, and it's also going to be placed in service with air Atlanta, Icelandic, it's already in the Icelandic registry. And, again, we've reached out to them to just to find out more about what's going on with this aircraft. But a couple of interesting takeaways from that is that air Atlanta Icelandic is just, you know, taking on 740, sevens left and right, from different people. And another thing is just this GMF aero Asia facility in Jakarta. That is really the sort of the go to MRO facility for all kinds of 747 reactivations and heavy maintenance. So it's pretty interesting. Robert Luke So Jeff, quick interlude here. Well, real quick interjection excuse me, if I get my words, right, aside from Indonesia, just really capitalizing on some of the classic variants from the seven, three and a 747, as you mentioned, do you see from your perspective, the need being driven, even though the volumes are going down, because we know that the airlines are still kind of reorganizing and getting back into the game with belly freight capacity, in addition to the ocean freight are still kind of in a flux as far as getting themselves situated to be able to carry more freight? Do you see that as a reason for this continued demand for air cargo at the time? Jeff Lee Yeah, I mean, I, we talked to Boeing as well, at Farnborough, and they agreed that, you know, because it takes quite a bit of money and effort to bring these large, wide bodies back into service. And if this is still happening now, that's surely just an indication that these are the kinds of people behind these various aircraft. It tells us what how they feel right? And basically, the the thing they are they hope they'll get their money's worth. And if things aren't working, yes, volumes are down. But I think people still think that the market is going to be pretty decent for, you know, at least a year. And with the way things are going, Yeah, I mean, perhaps they should have had these aircraft flying, you know, maybe half a year, earlier a year earlier. But then, again, you know, supply chain delays and maybe flight delays at the MRO facilities or whatever. And then a number of reasons. But still running. If they can get these things up and running as soon as they can, they will still be making decent money I think. Robert Luke Good point. Andrew Crider Well I think that is going to be all the time that we have for today. To those of you listening. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of cargo facts Connect. For more multimedia content like this, check out cargofacts.com and search cargo Facts connect on iTunes and Spotify. Join us again next time Subscribe to Cargo Facts Connect on iTunes or Spotify , or download the episode on Transistor .

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