The FAA is giving airlines until the end of the year to run passenger freighters with cargo on seats and other parts of the cabin where people normally travel.
We haven’t heard many airlines recently culling their cabins of seats, but Kenya Airways is now the first to do so with a Boeing 787.
Delta is responding to customer willingness to pay good rates for airfreight by adding more cargo-only flights.
Asiana and Azul are taking cargo seriously in an unprecedented year for aviation. To capture greater cargo revenue, Asiana has replaced passenger seats with a novel freight pallet system. Azul is turning regional jets into cargo planes.
21 Air is a small cargo airline that wants to expand but can’t afford new aircraft. So it’s acting as a sales agent and partnering with others to get more freight business when shippers are desperate for airlift.
“Look, Mom, no seats!” That’s Korean Air saying it’s flying a passenger plane with the seats removed because it can make more money putting cargo on the floor.
If you’re an airline with the name Scoot, you’ve got to move fast. The Singapore carrier did that when it transitioned to cargo flights and removing passenger seats.
Delta Air Lines is stripping — seats that is. Removing seats from passenger aircraft adds capacity for lucrative cargo.
There was a marked difference in how Canada and the U.S. reacted to the opportunity of transforming passenger aircraft into twin-deck freighters by removing the seats. One country moved very fast. The other was slow to the party.
Cathay Pacific has been flying passenger planes on cargo missions for months, but only in the last couple of weeks did it revert to pulling seats to create more cargo capacity. The new cargo capability comes with additional safety requirements and operational challenges.
The FAA’s ruling allowing airlines to jam more cargo in the cabin by removing passenger seats may be a pyrrhic victory. The incentive to do so may have passed.
One of the big innovations for passenger airlines during the coronavirus era is using their planes as dedicated cargo haulers. Cargo 2.0 was putting boxes in storage bins and other seats. Cargo 3.0 is cargo on seats.
Cargo in the hold, in the storage bins, under seats, on top of seats and with the seats removed. It’s all happening. And now some airlines are doing infill cargo with some seats removed.
The logistics sector specializes in figuring out creative solutions to transportation and trade impediments, and a pandemic is the ultimate test. Check out what DB Schenker and Airbus are doing to increase airfreight capacity.
Alaska Airlines may be late to the party when it comes to using passenger aircraft as freighters, but it wants to be an early adopter of using passenger seats for storage.
Domestic airlines want to put cargo in passenger seats or stacked on the cabin floor, as some foreign counterparts are already doing. But they first need authorization from U.S. authorities.
