Which aircraft will dominate the world’s freighter fleet in 20 years?

This is the second of three posts on the future freighter fleet based on the 2019 Freighter Forecast, published by Cargo Facts Consulting. Last week’s post focused on the key numbers of the latest Cargo Facts Consulting 20 year freighter forecast, which foresees the addition of 2380 jets and 421 new turboprops to cater for […]

• Frederic Horst
• May 15, 2019

The distribution of widebody freighters

Last month Cargo Facts presented a detailed analysis of the widebody freighter fleets of airlines worldwide. That analysis (available here) showed that 75 airlines (down from 79 a year ago and 85 the year before that) currently operate 1,002 widebody freighters (up from 995), and that 150 (down from 164) more widebody production freighters are […]

• David Harris
• March 8, 2017

A blast from the (3-engine) past

We’re taking a video tour down Memory Lane today, with a look the three-engine era — an era from which the only remaining aircraft are in cargo service. We’ll start with the present, and work backwards. Here’s a video assemblage of takeoffs and landings of the current star of the air freight world, the 777F and […]

• David Harris
• May 20, 2016

Out with the old? Not so fast… Part II

Yesterday we looked at the history of orders and deliveries of the four available production freighter types, and the current state of Airbus’ and Boeing’s freighter backlogs. You can read that analysis here, but today we look at how these developments, combined with low oil prices and the modest growth in air freight demand seen […]

• David Harris
• January 13, 2016

Nordic Global Airlines to cease operations

Finnair Plc, a 40% stakeholder in Finland-based all-cargo joint-venture carrier Nordic Global Airlines (NGA), said Nordic Global’s Board had decided to discontinue operations by the end of this month. In the announcement, Finnair said that, since its formation in 2011, NGA, using a “low-cost and thin-organization model” had grown to fly to four continents. “But with […]

• David Harris
• May 19, 2015

Retirement of 747-400 & MD-11 Freighters accelerates

For much of the last year, the topic dominating most conversations about the air freight industry is whether the rapid expansion of usable – and marginally costed – belly capacity will end civilization as we know it. An exaggeration, of course, but the swing in opinion from “the main deck/belly split is going to stay […]

• David Harris
• June 16, 2014

The bell continues to toll for the 747-400F and MD-11F

Speaking at this week’s IATA World Cargo Symposium in Los Angeles, FedEx founder, Chairman and CEO Fred Smith emphasized the importance in today’s difficult air freight market of operating the most efficient freighters available. As an example, he pointed out that a 777 Freighter flight from Hong Kong to Anchorage cost at least $30,000 less […]

• David Harris
• March 14, 2014