Podcast: 7Air Cargo prepares for launch

Jeff Lee
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 Jeff Lee, editor of cargo facts and it’s Friday, the 23rd of February. A new cargo airline is coming to the United States, and it plans to start operations using two 737-800 freighters. I’m talking of course about 7 air cargo, which is going through the certification process with the department of transportation and the FAA. But the first aircraft has already emerged in the carrier’s colors. I talked to CEO Amos Rodriguez and VP of commercial operations Carlos Cock last week for an update on 7 air cargo’s plans.

Jeff Lee
Hi Amos and Carlos, and thank you for joining us. So what’s the latest? Where are you with your certification?

Amos Rodriguez
As of today, we are on schedule with the FAA certification process. All of our pilots, everybody’s in training, we’re in the training phase with the FAA and should be doing tabletops sometime in March and proving runs also towards the end of March and certification on on track for maybe the first week of April. That’s where we are as far as our timelines with the FAA. We’re on track as of today.

Jeff Lee
Good to hear. Now on the aircraft side, we know that you’re planning to start off with two 737-800s, but what can you tell us about that?

Amos Rodriguez
Okay, we least we currently leased to MSN numbers from air castle. And the first aircraft is in Goodyear, Arizona being painted. Just got some pictures on Friday, the whole fuselage was already sanded. And we are also doing, you know, when you paint an aircraft, we got we hired this company that puts like 10 cameras all the way around. And they’re monitoring and recording the whole thing procedure. And then at the end, we will get like a speedy video, how we went and now the final product. So we will get that out. Once your product is painted. It got washed this weekend and it’s starting to paint today. Today, they’ll put the primer and and tomorrow I guess we’ll do one color. And then the other color you got every two days you can do a different color. So the aircraft should be painted for the middle of next week from what I’m being told completed.

Jeff Lee
But you know a funny story. Rob and I were had been guessing all this time who had which two aircraft? And actually the My guess was air caster. And but I think last week, I saw I don’t know if it’s this exact one. But I saw a photo of one of them in the covers of another operators but I guess maybe that deal isn’t going through and that aircraft has been repainted. I don’t know if it’s that one but no.

Carlos Cock
No, we secure. We’ve been dealing now for the past five months on securing those two leases. And they just went through carbon conversion so they were not painted. First one flew out of Miami to you know, good year for the paint. The second one just flew I think last week out of commercial, no?

Amos Rodriguez
Oh, no. The second one is still here and still in commercial yet. It’s got some minor touches to finish it on the sea check and it’s waiting for the 20 learner been coming from overhaul there. We’re also ready. And that one will also go to go year for painting was probably another two or three weeks from now.

Carlos Cock
Needless to say they’re AEI conversions.

Jeff Lee
Yeah. Was there a particular reason that you selected the AEI conversion versus the BCF or the BDS F?

Amos Rodriguez
Well the thing there is that we started the negotiation with air castle and that’s when they converted the aircraft with so we had no other choice but we got a good deal on these two leases and we went ahead and secured it. Yeah, we have two other serial numbers that we secured by we cannot we haven’t finalized the deal yet. So those still work in we will give them to you when we have them secured,

Jeff Lee
Interesting

Amos Rodriguez
So we submitted with a DLT in our DLT submission for And then you know, because you don’t want to you know how that works, the DLT filing, depending on how many airplanes you asked to, that you’re gonna put in within the year, then you got to have that amount of money put in the proper backup. So you don’t want to say I want to put 10 airplanes to go, then you got to put like, a million dollars in the bank you gotta have out there on the west, you don’t get to do it.

Jeff Lee
What kinds of operations and routes are you targeting once you receive your AOC?

Amos Rodriguez
We, we have two option we were gonna go with AC charter and also we are going to move our own freight. So we like we would like to do both not just charter only. We are going to do charter with different operators, different companies. And we are going to do our own freight as well.

Carlos Cock
As far as the first route. We are concentrating on Central America. Okay, there’ll be several destinations within Central America. And once we have that more solidified, we’ll share with you guys.

Jeff Lee
When you say your own freight? Do you presumably that means make your do stand the space himself? So do you have like some agents, a GSA partners or?

Carlos Cock
Yeah, we? Yeah, we’re in the early stages of those partnerships and development. But we’ll have a good mixture, and over 50% of operations will be consolidated free.

Jeff Lee
Interesting. And I guess with the two, eventually, with the two different conversion types. How important? Are the differences for you? Or like, does that mean you’re testing the two different types? Because different customers have different requirements? Or does it not really matter which version,

Amos Rodriguez
It doesn’t really matter, Jeff, the only problem with that is it’s better when you go with a Boeing conversion, because when you use like the AEI conversion, you have to pay a royalty to Boeing, no big deal. And also in your, in our manual system, you have the difference. So you have to deal with viruses is not a big deal, the the cargo loading system is the same, their load is the same. So all

Jeff Lee
The door is in a slightly different position,

Carlos Cock
There are differences with the other conversions, like on the four hundreds, on the 800, they pretty much get the standard. So all the three conversions are pretty much the same.

Amos Rodriguez
The same, everything’s the same. So no big deal.

Jeff Lee
From a timing perspective, how much of this is intended to line up with the recovery in air cargo demand, or are you not too concerned because of the commercial relationships you already have?

Carlos Cock
And I’ll answer that on the freight side, it’s actually a combination of both. It is strategic timing, because we’ve seen a decrease in narrowbody carriers in the in the area. So I’m sorry, a decrease of Wi Fi in the area. So it’s gonna it’s gonna be probably a good time for the narrowbody. So and also, we had planned, the reason we picked the narrowbodies because of this strategic partnership that we had, and that was going to be the aircraft necessary for for the routes that we were targeting. So it’s kind of all lined up.

Amos Rodriguez
It’s harder to get a load for 767 300. You know, you have to have a large amount of freight, to load up the aircraft totally and make a profit out of it. So we the narrowbody is a little bit easier. It’s a full pallet position you it’s like a truckload you can, it’s a lot easier to go to different countries and just pick up that that load makes it makes it more manageable, and it works just perfect for us.

Jeff Lee
Speaking of manageable, Miami is a pretty competitive market particularly for air cargo movement throughout the Americas isn’t it?

Carlos Cock
You know, we’ve been at this process for two years now. And during the that period, you know, being that Miami is home for us, we do have the advantage of playing home court. So it makes it a lot easier. Absolutely.

Jeff Lee
And you also, I guess, in the longer term, you’d be just sticking back here, we’re talking about narrow bodies and wide bodies, you still plan to only stick to the eight hundreds or go a bit larger eventually.

Amos Rodriguez
Yeah. Eventually, we do have clients, we are going to grow the company to borrow probably about seven, say probably seven or maybe up to 1400s. And then somewhere around seven or 10, we will make a decision on on the wide body and we already have a good feel for where we go in in wire what we are going to be using, and it will be the triple seven,

Jeff Lee
sevens, seven, eight, hundreds and triple sevens. Sounds like the perfect number.

Amos Rodriguez
Yep. Well, you know, our number is seven here. So a triple seven was just perfect, because our paintjob has three sevens

Jeff Lee
Yeah, it’s almost like you planned that

Amos Rodriguez
So we’re going to keep the same flow.

Jeff Lee
That was Amos Rodriguez and Carlos Cock with 7 Air Cargo and Xtreme Holdings. Thanks again. And that’s all the time we have today. For more coverage of the freighter aircraft market, visit cargo facts.com. Thank you very much for tuning in, and join us again next time.