Listen: ‘The Big Twin’ first flight, UPS quadjets, drone mishaps

In this week’s episode of the “Cargo Facts Connect” podcast, hear a discussion of the first test flight of IAI and AerCap’s “Big Twin” program , with the prototype 777-300ERSF taking off from Tel Aviv after a nearly two-year conversion process at IAI headquarters. Also, a talk on the possibility of UPS acquiring more 747-8Fs, as the carrier hinted last year at a change to its original plans to preserve its 747-8 fleet without new additions. But what will be the source of the 747-8Fs? Meanwhile, on the unmanned systems’ front, Bell’s APT drone was involved in a crash during testing. No victims were reported, and the crash remains under investigation. Tune in for a discussion with Cargo Facts Editor Jeff Lee and Associate Editors Andrew Crider and Robert Luke of these topics and more for the week ending March 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 and associate editor Robert Luke. Jeff Lee And I'm Jeff Lee, editor of Cargo facts. Andrew Crider Jeff Lee, let's open it up. Right. Right to you. Big news out of Tel Aviv today. Tell me more Jeff Lee certainly big news and news that we've been waiting for for a while, right with the first flight finally of a triple seven 300 e r s f conversion prototype. Now, we thought this was going to happen before the end of 2022. But in any case, the you know, slight delays and hiccups, I guess normal for any new program. But yeah, now, late March, that first flight has taken place. And you know, it was a brief two hour flight. Kind of what appears to be the usual flight paths for all their conversions 767 fly out into the Mediterranean back. But finally, with this significant milestone IAI and the rest of the industry, can look forward to the continued development of this program and heading toward eventual certification which will happen later this year. And you know, before too long, it will be the redelivery and it will head off to its new operator which will be Kalitta Air in the US. Now, Kalitta has said recently, it expects this to happen around the summer. We'll see. But it will be nice to finally see the first triple seven conversion painted in an operator's colors. Not that the IAI hybrid iai and AerCap cargo colors don't look nice. But certainly with a green cargo door looks interesting and unique. And I have to say, I will be I might be placing an order for the scale model of this prototype. Andrew Crider Certainly, it's amazing news and you make a good point as far as placing the order for the scale model. First flights are always a huge opportunity for orders to be placed. Fellows. Do we think that we're going to see more orders for the triple seven 300 ersf Jeff Lee Or orders to be announced? Certainly. Yeah, for, And they do tend to wait for a major milestone like this. And then they kind of keep up the chatter about about the program with more announcements and things. So yeah, I think we will be seeing a couple. Robert Luke And I'm hopeful that we'll hear of some wonderful announcements at cargo Facts Asia, where we'll definitely get a chance to meet with some of the IAI representatives as they continue to do their test flights. But in addition to that, I do believe that like Jeff said, there's definitely going to be more operators in line to place orders for these as you know, we start to see some of the older freighters retire in the lift capacity start to kind of decrease on the supply side of the air cargo industry. Jeff Lee And lessors, not just operators. Andrew Crider Which reminds me Robert, you had yourself broken a story on UPS a long time ago was Christmas last year and it just got picked up. Remind me what's going on with with or what can brown do for me? Robert Luke Yeah, Brown is definitely doing a lot when it comes to the 747 Dash eight as you know, and it's awesome to hear that because you know the last production model rolled out not too long ago with going to Atlas but they have announced when we made that discovery during their quarterly earnings report last year around August that they were going to be adding two more 747 dash eight F's to their fleet. And it's been confirmed now that they're going to be used 747 Dash eight s which should not really be a surprise considering that production line has ceased, but they expect to have delivery of both of those aircraft coming in 2024 based on their February quarterly earnings report. So that is definitely good news to see that, you know, there are some established integrators still committed to the legacy carrier queen of the skies 747 Dash eight F and we're looking forward to seeing them increase their fleet count from twenty eight to 30 when it comes to that freighter type. Moving on forward, beyond the UPS news it oh yeah, by the way, cargo facts, thank you for being the first to announce that groundbreaking Breaking News last year. But going into the next segment here, I'm gonna give it back to Jeff because this week we also covered a new A330. Or should I say second a330 conversion line will be operational next month. And it's taking its first A330 200, which is an ex Air China model for conversion with E F W. And don't ask me to say the name because I'm not going to say, Jeff, I'll let you go ahead and add a little bit more insight to what's happening in that room. Jeff Lee I will say EFW's name, we all like saying it. But we can't speculate we can't talk about the source of those 2 747 Dash eights? Robert Luke Well, yeah, I kind of wanted to but All right, let's go there. Before we go into this next segment. Good point that you made. Jeff, I'm gonna ask you first, who do you think is going to? Where are they going to get these aircraft from? Since they're obviously going to be used aircraft that are currently in service? Jeff Lee Right? I mean, yeah, we kind of knew that they these weren't gonna be new ones, all the new production slots were already accounted for. But I will say it is different. And a change from what the well, what the UPS strategy was, you know, a couple of years ago, when then new CEO, Carol tome was talking about how they wanted to basically not spend as much as before on the new aircraft and just make use of what what they had, which is why incidentally, they kind of declined Boeing's offer to, for them to order more Dash 8s or the final dash 8s Robert Luke do you think they regret that now that they have to kind of resort to getting used assets on the open market? Jeff Lee Um, I wouldn't say they regret it. But it's, and you know, the market changes so quickly that you have to, you know, decision, a decision you made two years ago or more, you know, that might not apply to, you know, the current conditions. And so, they, maybe they just had to quickly pivot and see where else they could get capacity or, and this leads into the the question about where those are coming from. Two years ago, they didn't know that there was going to be a war between Russia and Ukraine and, you know, suddenly, a load of 747, dash eights would be taken out of service. And maybe certain, yeah, a good opportunity to pick two frames up, came along. And they they said, Yes. So yeah, so the, you know, the whole airbridge fleet might be where they're getting those dash eights. But, as we were saying earlier, and, you know, those are all stuck in Russia, and we don't know whether that's possible or feasible to get them out of Russia. Robert Luke If that is the case, where would you speculate? Or if you had to guess, where would you think they would be acquiring these other two from? I'll go ahead and just, you know, I'm just going to throw out though a potential odd direction. Do you think the air Belgium 747 Dash eight could be two that they're looking at or possibly could actually acquire, to put into their, into their fleet? And this is just speculative? We're not We're not saying this is this is absolutely positive. Jeff Lee Yeah, Andrew, what do you think, Andrew Crider You know, it's hard to say, I think you go and going back to the Volga dnepr issue. Wherever these 747s are going to come? I'd imagine they would have to be either early deliveries of seven four, seven dash eights, or from an airline that's that's folded, which I would group all Russian carriers into that slot at that at this time. Jeff Lee So we know I mean, yeah, possibly, but the air Belgium ones they're flying those two. Well, soon, they got actually got another one. That was with previously from coming from the whole Volga Dnepr group. So I don't know because they didn't get those too long ago. What I had in mind, actually, interesting. That was the two that Qatar has. And I'll tell you why. Because they Yeah, I mean, yes, they've been obviously they have been using those two and they have been a good fit, in some ways for them, but another way They've also not been the best fit, because those are the only 2 74 sevens in their entire fleet. And they also have a ton of triple seven dash eight Freighters on order that are coming to join an already large fleet of existing current generation triple seven freighters. And so if they were going to kind of look at harmonizing the freighter fleet that, to me would be, you know, kind of an obvious move. Now, I don't know whether it would make sense for them on the commercial side of things because certainly the 747 Dash eight freighters probably fulfill a function that the triple sevens could not not 100% Anyway. And we know that Qatar already kind of streamlined its feet when it got rid of its 4 A330 Production freighters. Yeah, so I think that I wouldn't be shocked if those two actually turned out to be the Qatar ones. Robert Luke Made a good argument there. Definitely. It'll be interesting to see how it all unfolds as time moves forward. Jeff Lee Yeah. Oh, speaking of Yeah, A330s. You were asking me about the Chinese conversion line, right. So yeah, this is going to be the second A330 conversion line in China, at the Ameco facility in Chengdu. Now we saw a photo of what will be the first aircraft to enter that conversion line, which is an ex Air China. And interestingly, is an A330 200. parked outside the hangar and kind of with some paint already stripped, being prepared to enter that conversion line. And we've got that confirmation as well from St. Engineering. But unlike the first conversion line, in Shanghai Starco. That facility has now completed, we think its first A330 P two F and that aircraft is 300 for CDB aviation. Now, we'll have something on that pretty soon, I think. And we know that aircraft is going to Sichuan airlines, which, you know, kind of interesting Link was, you know, with the Chengdu conversion line and being in Sichuan Province, right. And that actually the first A330 P to F conversion in China, joining Sichuan airlines. But no, I do wonder who Well, first of all, who the who owns this a330 200 going into the Chengdu conversion line. And, you know, on a related note, who will end up buying it. But yeah, another kind of facility we're looking at, or that will soon be completing its first A330 p to F is the mobile aerospace engineering facility in Alabama. So, and that's coming up soon to be believe. Robert Luke Exactly. Yeah. So I think he's really setting the tone positively for the A330 conversions moving forward. So I think it's going to make a strong impact on the industry. And congrats, and kudos to the EFW team over there for doing such a great job with St. Engineering to continue to open up more conversion lines for that freighter program. Um, yeah, on that note, I have the feeling like I just need to pass the mic go. And I will go ahead and do so and so back to you, Andrew. Andrew Crider You mentioned things into the fold earlier. And that makes me think of one new drone platform that is literally foldable. An Australian company is delivering the corporal precision payload delivery system, or PPDs. To focus on the ground in Ukraine. The delivery drone will be able to carry a small payload we're talking about ammunition and food to soldiers on the frontline Ukraine, about 40 to 120 kilometers away. The drones are already big and very successful in deploying over 60 sorties, according to published reports. And here's I'm bringing this up because there's a flurry of drone developments around the conflict. This is mirrored on the other side of the conflict. Do we were receiving conflicting reports about a new drone being manufactured in Russia called the tramp or that's how we would translate. Now we weren't able to get too many details of the drone besides some footage that was reported in local media, we spoke to Volga Dnepr and they said that they weren't interested in the drone at this time. Which brings me to another drone platform that would be Bell's APT Bell's APT which of course is capable of flying around 35 kilometers carrying payloads up to 100 pounds. at speeds of 86 knots This is a very impressive design manufactured by it's such a titan of aviation as Bell the APT had its first incident it crashed on March 14, near a test facility in Texas. The FAA classified this as a loss of control incident with no injuries reported. Bell referred us to the NTSB for comment. Now, we didn't run this as a story. And I want to explain that that rationale. Incidents happen and they're certainly in in the test stage. We know that the drones that were powering Amazon's new service certainly were involved in high profile accidents. Which where no one was injured, though nothing was damaged besides the drone itself, which set that program back. We're gonna let investigators look into this and come up with report that see what what comes of it but I'm certainly interested myself to see whether this was a software issue, a sensor malfunction or something completely different that I'm not even thinking of, but we'll let the investigators weigh in on them. Well, unless any of y'all have anything left. I want to welcome our listeners into spring in say that that's all the time we have for today. For more multimedia coverage like this search cargo fast 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 . Don’t miss our two upcoming events that are essential for stakeholders in Asia and Latin America: Cargo Facts Asia , taking place April 17-19 in Singapore, and Cargo Facts LATAM , taking place May 15-17 in Panama City. Register today.

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