American Airlines Is Flying Freight-Only Planes For The First Time In 36 Years - am airlines freight only.jpg

https://jalopnik.com/american-airlin...the-1842532499

American Airlines is doing what it can to stay afloat these days, just like the
rest of us. On a recent flight from Dallas, Tex. to Frankfurt, Germany there
wasn’t a single customer to buy a seat in American’s massive Boeing 777, and
thus no luggage to stow in the cargo hold of the plane. The plane still flew
anyway, from March 20th through the 24th the plane took two round trips between
DFW and FRA loaded down with tens of thousands of pounds of cargo. According to
the airline, that hasn’t happened since 1984.

The 777-300 twinjet airliner has space for 14 pallet loads of cargo and is rated
to haul up to 100,000 pounds. All four flights were booked to the brim carrying
medical supplies, mail for active U.S. military, electronics to support
individuals working from home, and e-commerce packages. However, the seats all
remained empty.

I’m not sure what the demand would normally be for flights from Dallas to
Frankfurt. Maybe oil barrons who love a good Sauerbraten with Klöße and Rotkohl?
In any case, it’s clearly not a high-demand route in the face of the covid-19
international disaster. Where there aren’t people and luggage, throw all the
cargo you can cram in it to try to make it a profitable flight for the company.

American told Popular Science that it’s first cargo flight had 37,000 pounds of
goods onboard, while the return flight back to Dallas was loaded down with
60,000 pounds. Both of those flights were a mere fraction of what the plane
could carry.

American’s flights will be reduced domestically somewhere between 60 and 80
percent for the entirety of April and May, while international flights are
expected to be down as much as 90 percent. And obviously it’s not just American
on the downward path, the entirety of international air traffic is down
significantly.

This is an interesting way to keep the company afloat, but wouldn’t shipping
freight be more efficient in a plane built for nothing but cargo?

Here’s more from Popular Science:

"Crews can’t simply chuck items such as mail sacks into seats meant for
passengers. Instead, the bags and pallets go down below. Even if American had
FAA approval to use seats for safely transporting cargo, there are internal
technical challenges to figure out, says Kristin Rademacher, a spokesperson for
the airline. “How do we let our system know that it’s now mailbags, and there’s
a variety of weights?” she asks. “We’re all trying to quickly adapt our regular
processes to be able to fly in this new environment.”

So that’s a lot of space that is going unused.

Here’s a little fact that will blow your mind wide open for a second. On the
third leg of the double-round-trip, the 777-300 took off with 38,000 pounds of
freight and 160,750 pounds of fuel. Obviously the plane won’t burn all of that
fuel en route, but holy crap.




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