Thought you all might find this interesting -- A321 freighter conversion has been done:

https://www.aircargonews.net/freighters-world/more-conversion-work-confirmed-for-a321p2f-cargo-modification/

 

I wonder how it compares in capacity to the B757 freighter.

20 minutes ago, Mace said:

I wonder how it compares in capacity to the B757 freighter.

Not much in it as far as volume is concerned unless you are talking about the longest 757 variant. Otherwise I think the shorter 757 could probably fit one more AKH ULD in it because it is about six feet longer than the A321. However, I think the real difference would show in the MTOW, which is greater for the Boeing, not least because the 757 is really overpowered compared to the A321, so it would probably be a more versatile freighter. I guess that is why Fed Ex has loads of them.

Edited February 15, 20206 yr by Chock

It will be interesting what the acquistion costs will be.

Compared to passenger airlines, Cargo operators are not as concerned at fuel costs as they are with dispatch reliability and acquisition costs. This is due to the significantly reduced annual flight hours/year compared to a passenger airliner. A passenger jet is is the air roughly 3 times to that of a cargo jet annually. 

In effect, older generation jets in cargo ops, such as the 757F and the 737F (classics) enjoy a similar dispatch reliability compared to current generation since they are on the ground during the day which allows more time for any kind of maintenance needed.

TLDR: older generation jets are cheaper to buy and just as reliable for cargo airlines, which still makes them attractive.

(I did my master thesis on aviation cargo, although this was some years ago, I Still think the reasoning above would stand today?)

15 hours ago, SAS443 said:

It will be interesting what the acquistion costs will be.

That would be one way they might compete.

Then again there may end up being nothing to it, as the 757 fills a similar niche and is well-established in the cargo marketplace.  Possibly this could be in a space slightly below the 757F capacity.  If you want to go smaller yet, there are a few CRJ200 cargo conversions now flying.  These could all be flash in the pan aircraft though, as the 737 cargo variants and 757's / 767's are so dominant.  With so much package demand these days its neat to see these types of conversions.

On 2/15/2020 at 4:46 PM, Chock said:

Not much in it as far as volume is concerned unless you are talking about the longest 757 variant. Otherwise I think the shorter 757 could probably fit one more AKH ULD in it because it is about six feet longer than the A321. However, I think the real difference would show in the MTOW, which is greater for the Boeing, not least because the 757 is really overpowered compared to the A321, so it would probably be a more versatile freighter. I guess that is why Fed Ex has loads of them.

UPS was the launch customer for the 757 PF back in 1987. They purchased all new builds and have 75 in fleet with P&W and RR powerplants. Fed Ex was way later in the game and purchased used pass to freighter conversions. UPS was also the launch customer for the 767-300 Freighter in 1993 with 72 in fleet. All new builds except for 3. Both types are currently being retrofit with new avionics and panels along with the A300 fleet.

I don't see much market for the A321 conversion. Floors are not as strong to handle heavy freight. The 737 conversions are going strong. 

 

Edited February 19, 20206 yr by Camsdad13

8 hours ago, Camsdad13 said:

I don't see much market for the A321 conversion. Floors are not as strong to handle heavy freight. The 737 conversions are going strong. 

Whilst it is true that 737 BCFs (Boeing Converted Freighters) are indeed being made and potentially there will be a 900 conversion - in fact a production facility in partnership a between Boeing and Guangzhou Aircraft is due to open in China this year to begin converting 737-800s into freighters - there are a few problems with the BCF programme which may give the conversion of A321s into freighters more traction.

Previously, most BCFs were made from 737-300s and 400s, but the conversion requires upgrades beyond merely the freight conversion itself to enable the aircraft to handle contemporary flight routing procedures such as RNP, and to make a 300 or 400 capable of this takes a few million quid in avionics upgrades. This of course can be done, but the last 'Classic' 737 (300/400) was built in 2000 to fulfill an order backlog, since the replacement NG variant had been in production from 1996. This makes the youngest 737 Classic now 20 years old, meaning Classic BCF conversions these days are rarer, since they require that an operator with an older 737 suitable for the BCF conversion has to, in addition to the cost of the BCF conversion, then also upgrade the avionics, perhaps add winglets and maybe even install more economical CFM 56 variant engines. And still after all that, they'd have an aircraft which was less efficient than an NG (or a MAX) and which in spite of the conversion, was still an aeroplane with an old airframe with a limited number of years in it, perhaps not enough to warrant the outlay for all that work. It's therefore not surprising that even 12 years ago, when Southwest Airlines was looking at upgrading its 300s with new avionics to aid fleet commonality with its NGs and to allow them to fly RNP, they eventually decided it wasn't worth the investment and they did not go ahead with the move. And that wasn't even considering turning them into BCFs.

So as noted, and rather unsurprisingly, Boeing have moved on to looking at NGs for its BCF programme. The NG of course does not require those expensive avionics upgrades to fly an RNP, might already have winglets and such, so it is a more sensible choice for a BCF these days. However, there is still a problem. One of the things which is driving the demand for NG BCF conversions, is the fact that there are now considerably tighter regulations these days in places such as China when it comes to using older airframes, and the demand for freighters in China is very high of course, since pretty much everything we buy these days is knocked up in China lol.

Years ago, operators of large fleets of ageing 737s, for example Ryanair, could cheerfully offload their older fleet models into such markets and finding a buyer would be no problem. In that older era, you had airlines such as China Airlines suffering from a major airliner crash on average once every four years, which is a terrible record and was in no small part due to some terrible regulatory lapses on the part of China itself. It's not like that now in China though, they have cleaned up their act on that score big time; the days where you could just slap a logo on some battered 25 year old 727 airframe, not worry about the emissions and noise from those three turbojets and be in business flying freighters full with all those Amazon orders for cheap goods are long gone. China now  regulates very closely on older airframes, just like the rest of us.

This means demand is high for 737 NG airframes suitable for a BCF conversion, but the stock of these is limited, for a number of reasons. First up, you have operators such as Fed Ex acquiring large numbers of them in blocks from operators such as United. Then you have the issues with the MAX. It's no secret that many big operators of 737 NG had been expecting to be flying the MAX in pretty large numbers by now, but instead they've had to hang onto their NGs since there was no suitable replacement. Some had even bought the replacement MAX and now have the things sat doing nothing. Doubtless the MAX situation will be resolved in time, but in the interim, those Ryanair NGs which are flying passengers back and forth between Manchester and Fuengirola four times a day are going through airframe cycles like nobody's business, making them increasingly less of a differentiated choice from the 300s and 400s which were being deemed uneconomical for BDF conversion because of the age of the airframe.

It's not too surprising therefore that Airbus have seen a potential market gap for their older types. They have in fact already proposed a  A321LR variant, which has an increased MTOW or 220,000lbs, and this would potentially be an even better freighter than the present A321s, since that MTOW is pretty close to 255,000 lb MTOW of the 757-200F and the size of the aircraft is fairly comparable too. But back with the older A321s and their suitability for freighter conversion, they are of course well able to be re-engined with the newer NEO engines if desired for greater economy, which is not something which can be done with the 757, since Boeing did already look into that and deemed it uneconomical, particularly given that the newest 757 is now 16 years old. 

With regard to the 'floors not as strong to handle freight' comment in relation to the A321, this is simply not true. The 737 does not have a floor strong enough to handle heavy freight either until it undergoes the BCF conversion, whereby reinforcing the floor to allow it to handle up to 9,000lbs per pallet station is part of that conversion process. A similar reinforcement of th A321's floor is part of the freighter conversion process for it too. This is why we have to use spreader boards on the 737 and the A321 when loading stuff into the passenger variants on the normal passenger variant's cargo floor. In fact there are many A321s which already have a floor with the locks and rollers necessary for ULDs as opposed to bulk cargo operations, so to suggest that they are somehow not as suited to a cargo conversion as a 737 could not be further from the truth, because many of them are already halfway there, whereas you typically only see 737 passenger aircraft holds with either a smooth bulk cargo floor, or occasionally a sliding carpet facility, and even then invariably only in the rear hold.

When you work on loading cargo as I sometimes do (although less these days), you come across all kinds of stuff on the PMCs. And whilst it is true that we do sometimes have some PMCs which take a few of us to push them onto the hi-loader, most of the time one or two of us is enough to shove a PMC off the dolly anyway, so it's actually fairly rare (for us at least) to come across a pallet which would get anywhere near to maxing out a floor which can take 9,000lbs per station anyway. So I reckon it'd be a moot point anyway for many cargo operators, particularly those flying cans full of DVDs, phone chargers and all that other fairly lightweight stuff that everyone buys on ebay and amazon.

 

39 minutes ago, Chock said:(Boeing Converted Freighters) are indeed being made and potentially there will be a 900 conversion - in fact a production facility in partnership a between Boeing and Guangzhou Aircraft is due to open in China this year to begin converting 737-800s into freighters - there are a few problems with the BCF programme which may give the conversion of A321s into freighters more traction.

This means demand is high for 737 NG airframes suitable for a BCF conversion, but the stock of these is limited, for a number of reasons. First up, you have operators such as Fed Ex acquiring large numbers of them in blocks from operators such as United. 

Can you provide a link where you state Fed Ex is buying 737’s from United? 

22 minutes ago, Camsdad13 said:

Can you provide a link where you state Fed Ex is buying 737’s from United? 

Afraid not, it was a Fed Ex pilot who told me that one when I gave him a lift to the smoking shelter behind stand 65 from the remote stand where his 757 was parked at EGCC and we were talking about the grounding of the MAX and the continued use of NGs. I presume he knew what he was talking about, since he was a pilot for Fed Ex, albeit on the 757 rather than the 737. The info might be on the 'net somewhere, but as I say, I didn't learn of it from there.

12 hours ago, Chock said:

Afraid not, it was a Fed Ex pilot who told me that one when I gave him a lift to the smoking shelter behind stand 65 from the remote stand where his 757 was parked at EGCC and we were talking about the grounding of the MAX and the continued use of NGs. I presume he knew what he was talking about, since he was a pilot for Fed Ex, albeit on the 757 rather than the 737. The info might be on the 'net somewhere, but as I say, I didn't learn of it from there.

It’s not accurate. He may have meant 757’s from United but Fed Ex hasn’t purchased 737’s since a couple in the early 80’s. I can say UPS has no plans to buy 737’s either. At one point it was looked at to start retiring 757’s when we were in a recession. It is their smallest aircraft. Demand for 757’s from FDX increased at that time to replace 727’s. UPS decided not to do that. UPS just picked up more MD-11’s at a steal from Lufthansa. 

Edited February 20, 20206 yr by Camsdad13

2 minutes ago, Camsdad13 said:

It’s not accurate. He may have meant 757’s from United but Fed Ex hasn’t purchased 737’s since a couple in the early 80’s. I can say UPS has no plans to buy 737’s either. At one point it was looked at to start retiring 757’s when we were in a recession. It is their smallest aircraft. Demand for 757’s from FDX increased at that time to replace 727’s. UPS decided not to do that. UPS just picked up more MD-11’s at a steal from Lufthansa. 

 

He meant 757's.   As I'm sure you know the 757 is also a part of the BCF (Boeing Converted Freighter) program, just like the 737 is.  And even though the lines are different, the 737 BCF program is still taking up Boeing or their subs line space that could be used for 757 conversions.  So yes, I see what Alan brought up as an issue with the BCF program in general.

ATSG (Airborne) is doing a number of 737 conversions right now in Tampa. Amazon is picking up a number of the Boeing 737 BCF Line. They also increased their stake in ATSG in January.
It looks like carriers want to hold on to their 757’s right now. I think Boeing and airlines both regret shutting down that line. 

Edited February 21, 20206 yr by Camsdad13

Rather than post a new thread I thought I'd bring this back from February, since this new development is directly to this topic.

Looks like they now have some launch customers for the A321PF freighter:

https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/news/en/2020/02/a-new-life-for-a321s-as-highly-efficient-freighter-aircraft.html

To the question raised earlier in the thread, Airbus says they are reinforcing the floor.

I don't know the production numbers of the A321.  I get why they chose the A321, since it is the largest of the line, but I wonder if they have enough A321 airframes to meet demand.  Even though the A320 is smaller you would think they would have a lot more A320's available for conversion, than A321's.