Without much buzz, Airbus quietly wound down its A330-200 freighter program, revealing in a January Order & Delivery update that due to a cancellation from MNG Airlines, its backlog had fallen to zero units.
At least four of the thirty-eight A330-200Fs are on the move this week as they exit the Qatar Airways fleet.
In this Cargo Facts Connect episode, Charles Kauffman and Jeff Lee look at some of the new startup ventures that may take on the outgoing Qatar units. Their discussion explores why the A330-200F never caught on among express operators and finds that in retrospect, the design cargo density of the A330-200F was a mismatch with the needs of most express and general cargo operators. Freighter-converted A330s, meanwhile, are on a different path and are already showing early interest from express operator DHL Express.
A transcript is available below. This transcript has been generated by software and is being presented as is. Some transcription errors may remain.
Charles Kauffman
Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Cargo Facts Connect, the podcast and video series of Cargo Facts, the newsletter of record of the air cargo and freighter aircraft industries for over 40 years. I’m Charles Kauffman.
Jeff Lee
And I’m Jeff Lee.
Charles Kauffman
This is the Weekly Wrap for the week of February 5. Now before we begin, I’d like to thank our Cargo Facts subscribers, and our sponsors, which include 321 Precision Conversions, AEI, GECAS, Innovative Solutions & Support. If you’re not already subscribed, we invite you to start your free trial today at Cargofacts.com. Without much buzz Airbus quietly wound down its A330-200 freighter program, revealing in a January Order & Delivery update that due to a cancellation from MNG Airlines, the backlog had fallen to 0 units. Since the program’s first delivery in 2010, Airbus delivered a total of thirty-eight A330-200Fs to eight customers. Interestingly enough, at least four of those thirty-eight are on the move.
Jeff, where are we seeing movement in the factory-built A330 freighter fleet?
Jeff Lee
Yeah, you’re right, we are seeing some moves. Qatar Airways, which had four of these at A330-200 freighters removed all of them from service last month. And this move consolidates its fleet around Boeing freighters to twenty-four 777Fs and two 747-8Fs with two more to come later this year. It’s interesting because Qatar used to actually have a larger A330 freighter fleet. They had three leased season five that were owned. The three the least ones left the feed a couple years ago. And they sold one of the five owned last year to the Hungarian government. And generally these freighters worked well for launching new routes and for thinner roots like they were using them a lot on their on their Indian routes. And then gradually they of course outgrew this platform. On the passenger side as well, the airline has been removing the 330s. So it made sense for them to phase these out.
Charles Kauffman
All right, and where were they headed? Do you have any idea where these might end up? Or is it too early to tell at this point?
Jeff Lee
Well, we can try and connect some dots. Because interestingly, Belgium which is a small leisure airline, with three a 340s announced that it plans to add diversify into cargo and add at least four freighters this year. And it plans to begin flying two of these in around March. And while we tried to reach out to Air Belgium, they wouldn’t discuss these plans just yet. But a couple of sources actually believe that there’s something behind Well, there’s something more at play here with potentially some customer some kind of customer arrangement already in place. Which is interesting because, you know, it’s a relatively small airline and it wouldn’t make sense. But there is some kind of effort suddenly taken over cargo aircraft. And another kind of dock that we have is that we and at the same time Manchester based THG group, which is a UK ecommerce retailer announced last year that it was the king at around 283 33 meters for some kind of open controlled network. Now, this, I think they pushed the timeline a bit because it was being planned for a launch in October last year. And now it seems like they’re looking to start this in early 2021. with a focus on initially focused on Asia Pacific region. So it’s interesting to kind of look at all this, you know, this evidence of things happening, and we, it wouldn’t be surprising to see this disease end up potentially flying at 13 for this for THG. We don’t know yet. But I will say that THG they went public, actually, in September last year, there was one of the UK’s biggest IPOs. So there is some scale there. Of course, they’re not anywhere near as big as Amazon or, you know, but they do have 16 distribution centers around the world. And so if they do set up some kind of controlled operation that would be between Asia and Europe, speaking with So, in any case, it’ll be interesting to see where they go with that, whether or not it’s with evolution.
Charles Kauffman
There, there are definitely many proposals on the table. You know, and options for where these faders could end up. As you mentioned, we’ll probably know, in within the next couple of weeks or so since air Belgium does have plans to put the first two freighters. Now, whether or not these are the tickets are A330-200Fs or are freighters sourced elsewhere. The plans are to put those into service pretty quickly. We should also note that one airlines, which took the first three a 330 200 that Qatar had had leased from BOC aviation, and decided to retire a few years back. Sichuan has taken those aircraft and is on the hunt for at least one more a 330 200 production freighter do the guitar frames are one option. We’re not aware of any other operators looking to offload a330 production freighters at this time. They may in fact have to go for conversions or another type. We’ll see. Yeah, there’s quite a lot of activity with the program that has just ended reminds me of the 747 program that ended and where we’re at now.
Jeff Lee
I mean, genuinely Why do we think that the A330 200 production freighter didn’t quite manage to attract the same attention as the successful 76 and 300 for example?
Charles Kauffman
That is that is a good question. Freighter choice is a function of capability requirements–what needs to be transported, and the distance it needs to move. Express operators generally carry densities of about 8lbs per cubic foot, whereas general cargo is closer to around ten.
So if we look at the 767-300 production freighter has greater payload-range capability than the A300-600F, but less than the A330-200F.
Design cargo densities are telling the 767-300F design density is at about 8.4 lbs/cubic foot and the converted variant is about 8.1 lbs/cubic foot whereas the A330-200F is at 9.3 lbs/cubic foot. Large widebodies, in comparison, have design densities around 10. So both too capable for express, and not capable enough for general cargo, in many networks.
None of the major express operators opted for the A330-200F (although DHL did pick up five), and general cargo carriers have preferred large widebodies.
Jeff Lee
Yeah, I mean, by no means. Are we saying that there isn’t a future for the evening 30 of the raise, but just a, you know, different subspecies, if you will, because the conversions are starting to ramp up now. And in the past 12 months, we’ve seen three new orders, well, yeah, three new customers. We have Turkmenistan recently and CDB aviation. And last year, we had Stratus. But so we will, I think it is likely that we will see more on that front on the conversion front particularly because you know, there are hundreds of passenger a 330s just parked around the world and vessels will be looking to put things that they can do with these things. And further down the line. I mean, let’s not forget that I which is going to be busy converting Seven, six sevens will eventually be developing its own at 30 conversion program. So it’s there is a future. It’s just not here yet. But it will soon be taken off, I guess. But anyway, what’s, what’s on tap for next week.
Charles Kauffman
So looking ahead to next week, we’ll be releasing our 2021 updates to our annual wide body freighter fleet analysis. So we’ll take a look at how the pandemic and the current Air Cargo market is reshaping the wide body freighter fleet that is currently in service. And we’ll also be looking at the other end of the spectrum particularly at some of the recent orders for narrowbody conversions, freighters that are in the works, and we’ll be working to match some of those, those upcoming conversions with angry deliveries with operators.
Jeff Lee
Justin, that’ll be definitely interesting to two tenants. work out. But that’s all for today. To those of you listening. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Cargo Facts Connect with the latest on all things freighters and freighter conversions, visit www.cargofacts.com
Charles Kauffman
Thank you, Jeff. See you next week.
