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E-commerce spawns boom in narrow body, multi-stop air freighters

WHILE newly built cargo planes are all but extinct, there is a mini-boom in narrow body passenger-to-freighter conversions (P-to-F), reports Atlanta area Air Cargo World.

E-commerce, especially in Asia, requires smaller freighters to make more frequent stops. But because there are no current programmes to build narrow body freighters, there is a growing demand for P-to-F narrow body conversions.

There are two to one more widebody freighters flying today than there are narrow bodies, but demand for new-built widebody freighters is decreasing.

Seattle-based Air Cargo Management Group (ACMG) market researchers say 125 new freighters a year will be needed to meet demand over 20 years, assuming a 4.5 per cent annual growth rate in freight tonne kilometres.

"The news on the freighter front over the past year was a mix of good and bad, with most of the good news coming in the narrow body sector," said ACMG managing director Bob Dahl.

Demand is good with recent announcements from aircraft facilities houses for narrow body freighters.

Doral, Florida-based Aeronautical Engineers Inc (AEI), launched its 737-800 P-to-F programme in April 2014 and, at the just-completed Paris Air Show, announced a launch order from lesser GECAS.

San Deigo-based PacAvi Group, which formally introduced an Airbus A320 P-to-F conversion programme last September, said it had firm orders for forty-two A320 conversions for two customers - one in Europe and one in Latin America.

Beaverton, Oregon-based Precision Aircraft Solutions said it had booked an order from DHL Express for an unspecified, but significant, number of 757-200 freighter conversions.

Precision Aircraft Solutions has also agreed to provide four more 757Fs for Shenzhen's SF Express, and a number of converted 757Fs for San Francisco-based aircraft lessor Vx Capital Partners.

One problem is finding feedstock. Precision Aircraft vice president Brian McCarthy warned that the current appetite for narrow body conversions could lead to a shortage of the mid-range (3,150 to 4,100 nautical miles), single-aisle 757s that Boeing stopped making in 2004.

Mr McCarthy estimated that Precision, which specialises in 757 conversions with 15 pallet positions, will need to convert 130 to 135 of the mid-range planes over the next five to six years to keep up with demand.

Currently, the company has seven conversion lines running in five locations simultaneously, producing a new 757 P-to-F every three and a half weeks.

"Somebody has got to do another 757," Mr McCarthy said. "Its absence will leave a bomb crater in the middle of the market space. What else can you use if you want to fly express freight more than 2,800 miles?"

The only other option, he said, is to scale up to the larger, more expensive 767F, which is still very popular among the global integrators.