Listen: Air cargo tech advances while freighter conversions continue

This week saw the conclusion of our sister publication Air Cargo World ’s inaugural Air Cargo Tech Summit in Miami as well as a blend of widebody and narrowbody conversion news. In this episode of “Cargo Facts Connect,” Cargo Facts Associate Editors Andrew Crider and Robert Luke are joined by Air Cargo World Associate Editor Kelly Stroh, who shares takeaways from the event. Crider and Luke then move on to look at more 737NG freighters heading to operators based in South Korea. A transcript is available below. This transcript has been generated by software and is being presented as is. Some transcription errors may remain. Andrew Crider 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 your host Andrew Crider, associate editor of cargo facts. Robert Luke And I'm Robert Luke, associate editor of cargo Facts Andrew Crider I want to begin this week with a bunch of updates from new technologies, specifically that of destinus. Destinus is working on a hypersonic cargo aircraft that plans to deliver hyper Express cargo deliveries all over the world. Within two hours, the aircraft should promise to cruise around Mach 13, up into orbit on a hypersonic cruise rate. That company tested their new drone earlier in April. That test wasn't exactly what deafness had hoped for. But they were able to collect some key data from that flight, which promises major developments in their studies ahead. At the end of May, the company announced that they'd be moving to Spain as one of Spain's former astronauts joined their board. That's not the only big news for tech in air cargo. This week on the podcast, we're joined by Kelly Stroh, the associate editor of our sister publication, air cargo world. Kelly, thank you so much for joining us this week. You had a big conference didn't you? Kelly Stroh thank you so much for having me, too. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, we had our inaugural air cargo Tech Summit, this past Monday and Tuesday, live in Miami, which was really fun, because this is air cargo world's kind of first event, especially one that's technology focused. So it went really well. I'm a bit biased, but I did have so much fun. It was a really, it was a blast, I met so many new people. Well, we had a really great mix of you know, startups, borders, carriers, and kind of everyone in between there. And also, it was so great to see women in attendance there too, especially in such a male dominated industry. Lovely ladies from Rhenus logistics and also southwest, for example. And we also had some really insightful and thoughtful female panelists, and hopefully, next year, we will have even more female panelists. And I was really excited because we had really great audience engagement. And specifically thinking about all of the questions that our audience sent in throughout our panels. It to me just kind of showed that everyone is super curious and wanting to learn. And I also thought there was a really nice emphasis on kind of collaboration. I'm thinking specifically about our sustainability panel, which had two forwarders, a carrier and a ground handler. And it kind of, you know, we're just going to show that a lot of the things that we face in the industry is we are going to achieve through collaboration. So it's interesting to kind of see how that's working, and kind of like the intersection of topics and efforts and whatnot. So, yeah, I thought it was great. It really reflected just How excited everyone is for this digital transformation we're seeing in the industry. Andrew Crider That's really exciting to hear, Kelly, we absolutely love to hear about successful conferences. Besides collaboration, why do you think were the biggest takeaways from the Tech Summit in Miami? Kelly Stroh I think I think that we're entering into this era of efficiency, I guess, so to speak. There was a lot of discussions on you know, needed solutions, current solutions, and kind of what isn't working. So I think it was interesting to kind of see how the different pieces of supply chain and air cargo industry is really kind of examining kind of what needs to be done, especially in this like tumultuous, I guess market that we have right now. For example, we had a panel on kind of ULD technology, and one of the panelists he had mentioned that he would like to see ground handler centric solutions regarding ULD technology just because it makes it easier to adopt. Instead of like a very complicated, I don't know, solution. So and we also talked about kind of how drone operations are impacting the industry. And what's happening to promote safety when in regards to dangerous goods, what's happening and geolocation technology. So I think it's just interesting because the industry has really taken these kind of hard last two years very challenging last few years and are really looking forward to making everything more efficient using technology. So I think people are looking forward to working smarter and not harder. But yeah, Andrew Crider you kind of touched on it a little there. I know, we it's been a wild and dramatic last two years and even more. So last six months, did you get a sense of the attitude or market attitude there, as far as how the industry will progress. Kelly Stroh I mean, it's everyone kind of knows it's going to be a rough year, just especially with, you know, the Russian sanctions and what's happening between Russia and Ukraine right now. And also just kind of the backlog that's come up as a result of all of the Shanghai closures. So it is going to be pretty rough. But I think that the last two years have really prepared the industry for kind of whatever is coming up them, you know, we see a lot of forwarders and carriers kind of bolstering their networks trying to add capacity through new freighters or new charter networks, new collaborations. So I really, while you know, it is something to you know, kind of be worried about, or at least be concerned about, I really do think that we are prepared to kind of are we the industry is prepared to kind of take on whatever is thrown at them, especially as they continue to like harness digitalization efforts and transformations to really streamline processes and kind of create better visibility of what's happening. Because that also was a really big issue in the past couple years or just, you know, lack of visibility, because there's just so much chaos. So hopefully with all of these new solutions, it'll just kind of streamline that process. Andrew Crider That's, that's fantastic to hear. And you brought up Russia and Ukraine. So I quickly want to mention, one of my highlights for this week was at this at the start of June, we saw a Ukrainian registered Ilyushin cargo aircraft, delivering rocket engines to French Guiana. And I'm thrilled to see those types of operations but very encouraging news from Miami in you did a fantastic job. I want to encourage all of our listeners to check out air cargo world our sister publication to hear more about the air cargo Tech Summit in Miami Kelly, thank you for joining us. Next I want to turn to Robert Luke, we had some 737 updates this week, didn't we? Robert Luke Yes, thank you very much. Great job kelly Thanks for providing such insightful information. This week has been very, very busy with a lot of different transactions. But as you indicated, the highlighted key movements this week was the 7378 Hundreds. We had two of them that were actually ferried to South Korea to the only narrowbody operators in the country and Macquarie air finance launched its first 737 aei conversion and ferried it over to incheon where it is expected to be placed with air incheon for operations, and this will be the fourth 737 800 ai conversion that will operate with the carrier. In addition to that aviator capital have launched their first 737 800 conversion, which happens to be the first Boeing conversion 737 Next Gen that will operate within the country. Unit 30694 ex jet Connect is all expected to be leased to jeju air the first aircraft for the operator and the second narrow body operator within the country. So those were two key milestones that I felt needed to be addressed this week that were very important to the movement of freighter transactions in that region. So we look forward to continued growth over there. But these were definitely some milestone accomplishments for the South Korea nation. That's pretty much all I have to cover this week since we have such great news coming from the air cargo world, our sister publication side with their recent event taking place this week. So I'll hand it back over you drew so we can continue on. Thanks. Andrew Crider Well, actually, that's all the time we have left for today. So I want to say thank you to those tuning in. If you're interested in more multimedia contact like this, please visit us at cargo facts.com or type in cargo facts connect on iTunes and Spotify. Thank you. Subscribe to Cargo Facts Connect on iTunes or Spotify , or download the episode on Transistor .

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