CFS: American Airlines may add freighters amid pandemic capacity crunch

American Airlines is considering adding freighter aircraft as cargo continues to become a more important business line for the carrier in the wake of the pandemic.

During a panel on current growth opportunities and obstacles at the virtual Cargo Facts Symposium today, Jessica Tyler, president of cargo and vice president of airport excellence at American, said the airline’s internal strategy group is currently looking into the viability of freighters more frequently than at any point in the past several decades.

“We used to dust that off every couple of years and the answer was usually still no,” she said. “Now we’re dusting that off every couple of weeks and taking a look at whether or not it makes sense. We recently announced, as an airline, the retirement of additional aircraft, so there are options available to us to continue to evaluate whether that makes sense for us.”

However, while American Airlines operated six 747 freighters beginning in the 1970s, and has operated thousands of cargo-only flights using its passenger 777s and 787s during the COVID-19 pandemic, the carrier had not operated scheduled cargo flights since 1984. During today’s panel discussion, Tyler emphasized that American is approaching the question of whether to add freighters “as just a capacity question, and there are several different solutions” the carrier looks at, in terms of capacity addition.

American has brought forward the retirements of 737s, 757s, 767s and A330s, all of which could potentially be converted into freighters.

In one approach to bolstering global capacity, the airline is working closely with its partners in the oneworld Alliance, said Tyler, some of which — including Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways and Qantas — operate freighter aircraft.

“There are a lot of ways to make capacity work around the world, and freighters are just one version of that,” said Tyler. “There are so many variations of what that could mean for someone like American, whether that’s our own aircraft that we convert or some other option.”

In the meantime, American has significantly bolstered its cargo-only flights using its passenger 777s and 787s. The carrier reported a sharp drop in year-over-year cargo revenue for the second quarter of 2020, but turned its performance around during the third quarter by more than doubling its cargo-only flying from August to September to operate more than 1,900 such flights during the quarter.

The carrier’s widebody passenger fleet, which includes twenty 777-300ERs, is well-suited among large widebody fleet types for cargo-only flights, said panelist Dorothea von Boxberg, Lufthansa’s cargo chief commercial officer, during the discussion.

“I think passenger aircraft differ a lot in their ability to carry cargo,” said von Boxberg. “One that works really well is the 777-300, and any carrier operating those are likely to operate them much longer because the economics are better.” On the other hand, Lufthansa has largely wound down its own passenger freighter operations that were flown with its A330 aircraft, which von Boxberg noted “works at a certain yield level, but it’s less effective than some other aircraft” due to the lower cargo volumes it can accommodate.