Weekly Wrap: The new ATR freighter, plus an update on passenger freighters [Video]

Caryn Livingston
Hello and welcome to this episode of cargo FX connect the podcast and video series about all things freighters and conversions for the week of September 14 2020. I’m your host cocofax deputy editor Karen Livingston, and I’m joined today by Carrio effects associate editor Jeff Lee. Hello, Jeff.

Jeff Lee
Okay.

Caryn Livingston
Before we begin, I’d like to thank our sponsors 321 precision conversions AI at s gene. C cubed aerospace, ay ay ay ay ay and us cargo systems. So for news this week, we saw the test flight of the first factory built ATR 72 600 freighter. Jeff, can you tell us a bit about the launch order for this freighter and what makes it unique among the current ATR freighters?

Jeff Lee
Yes, this was a quite an interesting story to see this first production ATR free to fly finally. So, yes, it is the first production free to buy ATR because all all current ATR freighters are converted and this one does have a Dodge cargo door and a targeting system. And it will be they told us that it will be testifying for about a month and then it will begin to be delivered to FedEx that launch customer FedEx next year. This will be you know, kind of a game changer for FedEx because, well it already has at ours and other smaller centers operated by various carriers like Empire airlines and mountain air cargo. But like I said, Those Don’t have the cargo routing system and they don’t. And those are antiquated for containerized freight, whereas this one is. And also FedEx is actually expecting to take delivery of the sky, the new sky couriers serve as well. And that one also has containerized capability. So with these new types in a FedEx can upgrade its regional feed operations. And what differentiates it from Amazon, for example, is that because of these containerized abilities, it will be able to handle connections better from the larger fleet. And that, I guess that does kind of give FedEx somewhat of an advantage.

Caryn Livingston
Yeah, and it sounds like these these new freighters are should release kind of speed up and increase efficiency for some of these operations with the the cargo loading systems. So, with these, with these test flights occurring this year, what is the status of FedEx as current orders and options for the ATR freighter, and may we see any additional options exercised as e commerce has accelerated during the pandemic.

Jeff Lee
FedEx right now has 30 ATR 72 600 F’s in order and options for 20 more and for the sky courier as 50 on order 50 options. I think if they’re replacing and renewing them, the current regional feeder feeds it’s very likely we will see additional orders and, you know, apart from FedEx, we probably see orders from other operators as well, particularly, as he said, with the growth of e commerce and the need to serve many of these smaller regional markets.

Caryn Livingston
Okay, thank you. And it’s it’s pretty usual for cargo facts to cover, you know, these freighter aircraft orders. But this week, you also wrote a story kind of on changing gears which we’ve seen, you know, pretty broadly in the cargo market this year, which is the introduction of passenger freighters and several 10s of thousands of these flights occurring since the operations began back in March. So, for this story, what points stood out to you when you were looking into the number of passenger freighter flights?

Jeff Lee
You Yeah, this has been interesting, but Some kind of well, different, interesting but tedious because like, we actually started looking into this and March. And of course, back then things weren’t as widespread as they are now. But and the surprising thing is that they are still growing and widespread, you know, in September and they have just been exploding among we’ve listed seven of the top airlines that have used passenger aircraft for cargo only flights and just among the develop it Yeah, just for those seven that we’ve listed. The total is something like around 50,000 flights, but I think the total worldwide is easily close to double that and it’s just amazing and the The number of aircraft that have been used our count is about 2500. And among those 170 have been reconfigured in some way by, you know, having seats removed. So it’s just the looking at the individual airlines, Emirates, you know that it’s just mind boggling how many they’ve done but of course, starting March they really developed a very complex network of these flights and they’ve just been growing ever since. And now I think it’s up to about 120 routes that they’re operating with these passenger freighters and, of course, they reconfigured 10 of their triple seven triple seven 300 yars a couple months ago and then the next one is Qatar. which hasn’t reconfigured any of that. But, and the thing about Qatar is that they, throughout the pandemic, they’ve actually sustained a reasonable amount of operations on the passenger side as well. So to have operated so many while still doing so many passenger flights, and also let’s not forget that they have the biggest frita fleet of all the combination carriers. So this has been quite impressive. And what came as a surprise was Japan Airlines, which doesn’t even have any freighters and they’ve been doing extensive passenger free to operations domestically as well. So it’s been interesting to see all these all these airlines jumping into This kind of operation, but I think they will continue because we still we’re still seeing them grow these these operations and start, you know, on the reconfigurations side they some yes, some have been reconfigured back into passenger configuration, but many haven’t. And we’re still seeing new reconfigurations. So for example, this week we saw Delta joining the scene as the first US carrier to do it. And I know that Cafe is planning to do more, depending on you know, the demand on on both the passenger and cargo side Singapore, Singapore recently did. Well, their low cost subsidiary scoot reconfigured couple of a 320s. So yeah, it’s still ongoing and it will continue for for a few more months at least.

Caryn Livingston
Right. I mean, it’s it’s pretty hard to tell exactly how long this this will continue with you know, many airlines expecting that passenger demand might pick up again sometime next year, some industry organizations not expecting it to to return to kind of a normal until 2024. Perhaps. But as you mentioned, the the way these flights are operated varies quite a bit between some of these carriers with, with some of the carriers having removed seats from several aircraft and others who’ve said they don’t plan to remove any seats. With this kind of uncertainty. Is there any point where we might see you know, Have these operations moving toward kind of removing the seats? Maybe. And I know there’s been some technology introduced to kind of better take advantage of the main deck on these aircraft. Is there any point where that would make sense?

Jeff Lee
I think we won’t see, you know, many more reconfigured not on a larger scale as we did in April May. But that’s not to say that we won’t see any more. And like he said, but I mean, these past few months, airlines have been finding all sorts of ways to make the voting process more or less inefficient. You know, they’ve got conveyor belts or some kind of Yeah, conveyor belts and they’ve like the sliding boxes on on a wooden pallets and some summer have installed pallets on the on the cabin floor. But that doesn’t mean they can load these pallets through the doors of this but still have to, you know, put the bring the empty pallet in through the door small door, then load the pallet. But yeah, I don’t think we’ll see huge amount. reconfigurations but maybe a handful more. So

Caryn Livingston
okay, that’s fair enough. And so looking ahead what is planned for next week on cargo facts?

Jeff Lee
We are looking at some of the aircraft that have been converted for firefighting purposes. And just to look at what that markets like and the kind of conversions that they’ve been doing, and we’re also looking at the Express fleet For our gear the future on on the Express market.

Caryn Livingston
Okay. Well thank you, Jeff. And thank you to everyone for joining us today on the cargo FX Connect podcast. As a reminder, you can find all the news discussed today, the passenger freighter database and the latest updates at WWW dot cargo facts calm. We’ll see you next time.