Listen: New conversion sites, airlines and drones

In this week’s episode of the “Cargo Facts Connect” podcast, Cargo Facts Editor Jeff Lee and Associate Editors Andrew Crider and Robert Luke kick off the discussion with the unveiling of a new cargo drone in Israel that is manufactured by Heven and uses hydrogen power to enhance its range . And as another A330 arrived in Dresden for conversion with EFW, the company announced that it will open a second A321 conversion location in China . Meanwhile, Qantas will add more A321 conversions , and SmartLynx earned approval from the Australian government, which prompted a discussion on Asia-Pacific market developments as a whole. This week also saw the launch of a new airline in South Africa . Tune in for a discussion of these topics and more for the week ended Feb. 24, 2023. 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. Robert Luke And I'm your co host, Robert Luke, associate editor at cargo Facts. Jeff Lee And I'm Jeff Lee editor of cargo facts. Andrew Crider I'm happy to join our listeners today from gate E14 of Chicago's mighty O'Hare, a Silk Way 747 just passed by and been spotting all day. That's just a exciting little tidbit for our unconventional studio this week was an exciting week. On the other hand for drones, we had a new startup in Israel, Heven drones, which is perusing and unveiled their new hydrogen, then correct me if I am wrong, I have to find it if the h2 D 55. Now this is a hydrogen powered drone. And the reason why having a switch to hydrogen is because they're going to be marketing, long range for their drone platform. If you look at our drone database, you can see hundreds of drone types. And some can appear very similar. And it's going to be I would think, in the next coming decade, consolidation within drone manufacturers as they find their market share. So it's always of truly interest to see where drones come up against for the have this sustainability and the range enhancements. That's a very exciting. We also heard back from Blue flight, which recently secured an order for 40 of its drones I would be the larger cobalt drone from spright spright is a medical airlift company. Now I've been chasing down blue flight for a couple of months. We sat down with Frank, as he was overseas, I wanted to give him a shout out for giving me a call. We have some very outstanding content that is going to be coming to you on that drone in the next coming weeks. Which turns me to our next subject. I read news of freighter conversions and start at being a enhancing new startups now they cited information that our readers being of superior class and taste, sensibility and intellect would have already known from information that was given to them in the cargo facts symposium, where we received market insight as far as the appetite for Freighter conversions versus factory line freighters. Now, they use this in the frame of startup airlines, which is where I want to turn to our industry expert, Robert Luke, because you broke news have a brand new airline in South Africa. Robert Luke Andrew, that is absolutely correct. sud cargo airlines and I must give a congratulations to Thomas honeyball and the Astral Aviation team, it's headed by Sanjeev Gadhia have recently announced that this new startup will commence at the Africa cargo summit that just took place recently. And it appears that astral aviation, which we were able to discover for us because our subscribers love getting quality information that Astral will actually have a minority stakeholder in this new startup and all of the aircraft will be leased through Astral aviation, starting with a 727 200 freighter. And the very important news is that all of the other aircraft from their 757s, which is their very well established medium wide body freighter, in addition to the media wide body, freighter and 767 F and the 747 that they currently have in their fleet will also be made available to this new startup on an ad hoc charter basis. Now, the 727 will be wet leased to sud cargo Airlines for approximately six months, and eventually will tag team in partnering with Astral they will not only determine which narrowbody prototype will be integrated into their fleet in a more larger capacity, whether it's the a 320 prototype that's now being put into a large scale production with EFW or one of the 737 variants that are currently in production, or excuse me conversion let me correct myself. They will determine which one of those two will become their narrowbody fleet for the future going forward. And the great part that we also now know for sure is the two e190. s that are going to be released to Astral aviation with Nordic aviation capital will also be sub sub leased to suit cargo airlines. That is not getting the facts for you guys. I don't know what it is. And then before I round off and pass it onto Jeff Lee, the editorial expert of all knowledge when it comes to air cargo transactions, we just want to give a congratulations to challenge airlines that they diversify their 767 freighter portfolio. And we'll also be adding to to their Belgium based subsidiary challenge airlines BE, and also to aero Angelina's Aerolineas Argentinas excuse me from talking a little too fast right now, but to earliness, Argentina's congratulations on getting your first AEI converted 737 800. Andrew Crider Thank you very much for that summary, Robert. Jeff, I want to turn to you because other than new airlines, there's also new facilities. Tell me more. Jeff Lee Yeah. And it seems like there's always some new conversion line opening somewhere. And this is just going back to that, you know, other reports about how the conversion market is booming, and so on. I mean, this is just, I guess, further proof of that. We are seeing and continue to see more conversion orders, and therefore to handle that extra demand, and also to kind of relieve some of the stress on the supply chain and all that. But yeah, that's what's seeing additional conversion capacity. We will see more of that coming online in the next couple of years. So this latest one is going to be the haite facility in Tianjin. What's interesting about this is that this MRO facility is not new to conversions. It's actually already a conversion site for IAI 737 NG conversions. But now we're gonna see them diversify into Airbus conversions with EFW planning to launch or to begin its first A321 P2F conversion there soon. And the other interesting thing is that despite all the supply chain problems, and what we saw in the past two years with quarantine and travel restrictions and all that, conversion providers are still seeing opportunities and still continue to invest in opening new lines in China. Because there are now multiple MRO facilities in China that are home to different conversion providers, different conversion products, different aircraft types. So apart from this haite, which will soon do A321s and 737NGs, we have a couple of other ones like HAECO Xiamen, which does 757 conversions, a321 conversions, as well as 737 800. And there will be further new conversion lines in China. We've got EFW, will be doing a330 conversions. in Chengdu, but yeah, so it's just all these new and upcoming conversion lines that are going to be in China, and you've got several in Guangzhou as well. And so it's interesting that they are continuing. And of course, it makes sense. With China being such a huge market, there's a lot of demand on the way for these newer conversion types. And just having facilities there helps with that. Not to mention the cost advantages and the labor and the experience of all these facilities with conversions. So yeah, but on the topic of A321s actually, I did want to talk about qantas the Australian national carrier, they are going all in with their Airbus freighters. So Andrew recently did that story about more Airbus freighters going to Australia, both with Qantas and smartlynx. But and that was right before Qantas announcement about them getting three more a321 freighters and you know, this we got confirmation from them that this will give them basically a fleet of twelve a321 prefix which is a massive step compared to what they have now, which is 4 737 classics and so they they did mention in some of these, their their investor documents. They're basically confident about the E commerce demand and in Australia and so these will all bear in mind they already fly three right now as part of a partnership with Australia Post So I have to wonder how many of these incoming a321s will also be part of that partnership. But I guess another factor is that, and this is I think there's some connection with what they're doing on the passenger side as well. Because domestically, they they, they still fly some wide, some of their A330 wide bodies on domestic routes. But I think as they implement some changes, there'll be more narrow bodies flying domestically, which then necessitates more freighter capacity to fly all of these shipments and ecommerce goods around the country. So we'll see what happens. But in any case, it's good. It's, yeah, it's great to see Australia and Qantas now, investing so much into freighters, and they'll be Andrew Crider this is all domestic growth and not for the larger growth of the Asian market? Jeff Lee Well for the A321s, they do specifically mention domestic, which is interesting. Andrew Crider That's going to be a lot of they're just sent another a 330 for conversion. Jeff Lee Right. Their 330s are. So they've got two right now in Dresden. And when they announced that development, they said that one would be flying internationally, while the other would also fly domestically. So yeah, there's going to be a lot of dedicated freighter capacity from Qantas within the country, which kind of makes sense. I mean, Australia is a huge country. Robert Luke That is true. Now, could this potentially open a door for a potential partnership with another carrier expected to make an entrance into the Australian market? Or do you think that's going to just remain both both entities operating on their own accord? Jeff Lee They're not I mean, this, having 12 would really solidify the presence and their market share in the country. And there really aren't a whole lot of freighter operators in Australia and the other ones, also, at least fly part of their capacity on an ACMI basis for Qantas. So and they did say that there were some at least some of these new a321 freighters will be replacing that wet leased capacity. So yeah. Let's see what happens with that and what implications that has for the existing AMCI providers. Robert Luke That was actually more digging into that discovery, we kind of found out a little bit more about with SmartLynx and just getting your perspective on the you see a potential partnership there with Qantas? Or do you think they're just going to basically operate on their own schedules and strategies? Jeff Lee Well, I mean, smartlynx is an ACMI specialists. So you know, we wouldn't be too surprised, I guess, if they ended up flying some of their freighters for Qantas or any other Australian operator. But I guess my point was that with nine more A321 freighters on the way as well as the A330 for domestic, that will already give them a lot of their own capacity. But we'll see. Andrew Crider I mean, the reason why I bring up I wanted to ask you about these market questions is simply because with the EFW plant, I'm bringing and the developments for Qantas, it's very apparent that there's a lot of market shifts happening in Asia as a region, which makes me further bring up if you want more insight into the Asian market, cargo facts Asia, the essential events for stakeholders in the Asian marketplace, takes place April 17 through 19 in Singapore. Right now, we are still offering early bird pricing on that. What a bargain. Jeff, Robert, do you have anything else to add? Robert Luke I think we're good this for this week. We definitely covered a lot of content in the last couple of days, but I'm good for right now. How about you, Jeff? Andrew Crider Well, before Jeff goes out of his way to remind us all that he is, in fact Australian I'm gonna say that's all the time we have for today. For more multimedia coverage like this search cargo facts connect on iTunes and Spotify and search cargo facts.com. Thank you very much for tuning in. And join us again next time. Subscribe to Cargo Facts Connect on iTunes or Spotify , or download the episode on Transistor . Cargo Facts Asia, the essential event for stakeholders in Asia, will take place in person April 17-19 in Singapore. Register today to take advantage of early-bird pricing.

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