Listen: How deep will passenger ACMI carriers venture into cargo?

For the week ended Sept. 3, Cargo Facts broke the news of regional carrier Air Wisconsin’s incoming CRJ200 freighter . Air Wisconsin is the latest passenger ACMI operator to venture into freighter operations, and likely won’t be the last. In this episode of Cargo Facts Connect, Charles Kauffman and Jeff Lee look at Air Wisconsin’s plans and discuss whether passenger ACMI carriers will find appealing opportunities in air cargo over the long run. 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 and welcome to this episode of cargo facts connect the podcast and video series of cargo facts, the newsletter of record for the air cargo and freighter aircraft industries for over 40 years. I'm Charles Kauffman, Senior Editor of cargo facts. Jeff Lee And I'm Jeff Lee, Associate Editor of Cargo Facts Charles Kauffman To those of you tuning in today. Thank you for joining us. This week, we reported to us based regional Carrier Air Wisconsin has added its first CRJ 200 freighter, a pretty significant move for a carrier with limited exposure to cargo prior to the pandemic. Jeff Lee That's right. And this carrier has been operating a fleet of 64 passenger CRJ 206 exclusively on behalf of United Express, and prior to this, they told us that they had carried a limited amount of cargo in those batteries. Charles Kauffman Yes, and we've definitely seen some other combination carriers in the United States and globally move into freighters during the pandemic over the last 18 months or so. And we'll get to that in a moment. But first, Jeff, tell us, what is air Wisconsin planning to do with their new freighter? Jeff Lee Well, it's pretty interesting when we were first alerted to this aircraft existence, we obviously were wondering whether the airline had converted one of its existing passenger car days and weather where they had converted it and whether this was a deal with AI at their own MRO facility, along with a number of other questions. But you know, because AI, obviously, is the only SDC holder with a large covered open version for the CRJ. And they work with several MRO So, you know, he could have had an arrangement with Wisconsin, but after talking with the airline, we learned that this aircraft is actually being leased, and unlike, you know, unlike all the other CRJ 200, that they own, and that this had actually been converted a number of years ago at the commercial jet facility in Towson, Alabama, and originally been destined for another operator, but ultimately didn't take up the aircraft. So it had just been sitting there in storage. But going back to Wisconsin, this is obviously a completely new line of business for the carrier, and they we know that they intend to carry out, you know, kind of a trial operation with the just the single freighter for now. And they're looking at charters and long term leases. And, you know, they say that they haven't got any plans at the moment to any concrete plans at the moment to add more freighters. But they did say that having just one freighter doesn't really make sense. Which is absolutely true. Charles Kauffman Yeah, no, it really is, isn't it? Most operators do scale up if they are really serious about getting into the cargo business. When I think about CRJ freighter operations, I my mind tends to go to Mexico and automotive charters between suppliers and auto factories located across North America and in the United States and in Mexico. Is there any indication This is a market they have they hope to go after? Jeff Lee Well, I mean, when we looked at CRJ freighters with cargo doors, the largest operators, Ira noticed TSM and Mexico and ifl group in the US, and those carry a significant amount of auto business. So Wisconsin did say that this market is an option and that's something that they're definitely looking at. But we will see and also when it comes to border traffic between Mexico and the US, Mexico recently lost its doubt had its safety rating downgraded. So that would cause a bit of disruption and we know of at least one carrier actually that had to change its fleet plans because of that safety rating downgrade. And the other thing is, you know, with automotive traffic. Us Asia is also up sizing and adding MDT freighters. So that is an interesting market for these kinds of regional aircraft. Charles Kauffman Yeah, definitely. And as I mentioned previously, we've now seen multiple passenger a CMI are Operators move into freighters. Jeff, do you think this is part of a larger trend at this point? Or are we just seeing recovery and contingency plans play out? amid the COVID crisis? Jeff Lee I think it's hard to say because sometimes with some of these airlines, they had been planning, diversification. But even before the pandemic, I mean, we've seen that that being the case with other airlines around the world, but what we can say, I think, is that most airlines taking a long hard look at the cargo business and the free to business specifically. And but maybe it isn't surprising that it's been the the regional when it comes to the US that it's been the regional carriers that have actually made any kind of inroads look at Mesa airlines, which started late last year with the hL 7374 hundreds. And that was noteworthy because that was included completely new aircraft type for for the company. And when we spoke to them, earlier this year, they said that they'll they'll grow that cargo business and they will actually soon be leasing their own 737 400. Similarly, I always had a single 737 300 freighter, but they also started operating DHL seven, three sevens last year with above 408 hundreds. And recently they leased an 800 sf of their own from BlackRock and that's now flying an ACM AI service for DHL. And I also told us that they will be growing that business and go and they plan to take their freighter fleet to at least 12 aircraft. So that's that's pretty significant. Charles Kauffman Yeah, no doubt. So we've seen we've seen momentum. Among the the narrow body jet freighters among regional jets. And of course, in the turboprop freighter segment, we're seeing some movement as well. We reported a few weeks ago that Amazon has now placed its first two ATR 72 freighters with silver Airways, which is another operator who will be new to operating cargo configured aircraft. The Silver has yet to begin flying those two, two freighters. But we do expect that to happen soon. The airline did say that it plans to start cargo operations in September 2021. And yeah, somehow we're there already. Jeff Lee Right. And also, when you're talking about ETS, FedEx is now taking its new build seven ATR 72 600. And at least one of those is now in the US. But when these aircraft replace some of their older atrs, we may see more of them end up with carriers new to the type earlier this year, air north and Canada took one of those from ASL airlines which had been operating it for FedEx, and they will probably soon be putting that into service. Charles Kauffman Yeah, that's a that's a good point. That's about all the time we have today. Thank you for to those of you tuning into this episode of cargo facts Connect. For more multimedia content like this, check out cargo facts dot com and search cargo packs connect on iTunes and Spotify. Join us again next time. Subscribe to Cargo Facts Connect on iTunes or Spotify , or download the episode on Transistor . Cargo Facts Symposium, taking place LIVE October 25-27 at the Wynn Las Vegas, is the essential event for stakeholders in the air cargo industry. Learn more and register at www.cargofactssymposium.com .

Listen: How deep will passenger ACMI carriers venture into cargo?

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