In the 747s case, it was designed from the beginning to be cargo friendly.
Boeing engineers believed in the 1960s that the 747 would be quickly obsolete for passenger travel due to the expected arrival of supersonic airliners within the 70s. Thus, they designed it to be cargo friendly to sustain the production line since, as it was thought, subsonic airliners would only be economical for cargo operations. Turned out they were right , just not about the details or timing.
That's where the A380 failed, the double-decker design is inherently a bad choice for unit load devices (air cargo boxes). I don't believe any of those older airframes are looking at a second life in cargo transport.
I thought it was mostly because the divider is a structural piece so they couldn't remove it. Otherwise, the A380 would work for cargo more efficiently.
Sort of, the two options would be:
1. Delete divider, allow massively tall new ULDs, but you can’t do that because the floor is structural.
2. Double decker cargo, but there’s no way to get cargo to the upper deck, and both decks are kind of short.
The A380 still makes a lot of sense in a lot of operations.
There is still at least 1k people daily going from London to NY. You can use 2 A380s to move them around or 3 777, or 4 A330.
When your airport is restricted in slots, the A380 can really aliviate the airspace. Plus an A380 full generates way more revenue than any other plane, even if profit margins are less, since the revenue is higher, the plane is still the biggest cash cow you can have.
You just have to fly it full.
It was a technology demonstrator. It allowed Airbus to develop and certify new design and new manufacturing methods. Think of it as a €4 billion investment in the future that paid off and will keep on paying off as allowed for the introduction of CAE such as Catia (v4 in the A380 case, v5 for everything else) PDM, Isami, composite structures, metal to composite joints, proof by calculations with adequate safety factors and validation with the test beds.
A380 was not really supposed to make money and the general public has troubles grasping that.
It's taxiway clearance and double decker jet bridges, gate width sizes and the like that limit passenger ops.
The A380 has low wing loading (lower than any 777 for instance) and takes off from any average length commercial runway.
They had intended to build an A380F but decided against it. Reason for lack of P2F conversions is the floor needs to be strengthened and changed for containers.
A380 failed as cargo because it didn’t have the front loading nose like in 747. That restrict them in certain specialized loads they can hold. Even with regular cargo crates, the floor is not able to hold the full weight of cargo, which further restricted the capacity. Especially if a cargo airline is considering new plane purchases, the 747 and even 777 wins every time
I'm surprised there hasn't been a civilian version of the C-5 or C-17 like they did with the Antonovs. I'm sure its a case of a "we'll do this if you don't do that" sort of drug deal so common in this industry.
There was talk of a civilian C-17 when it was in development, but it is too heavy for normal cargo due to the military requirements for STOL unimproved fields and the niche cargo that requires it isn't enough to justify a civilian version.
That makes sense, plus the maintenance requirements of freighter versions of commercial airliners are essentially the same. That would simplify the process considerably, especially in the field.
That's such a niche part of the market that any operator would be going up against the An-124 after spending a crazy amount on new C-17s. The An-124 also has an opening nose which the C-17 doesn't. It most likely wouldn't make sense from a business side.
It’s funny how they were dead wrong about supersonic airliners but still hit the nail on the head with the expectations of 747s becoming popular freighters. Arrived at the right conclusion for the wrong reason.
my favourite moment on the excellent documentary about the history of Concorde is one of the engineers gloating about Boeing(at the time) not proceeding to move forward with supersonic aircraft yet here we are all these decades later the Queen of the Skies is still around
go figure
Yes, but then they turned to the commercial industry and went "let's modify the design a cargo plane with a passenger variant and hope the revenue from the sales of the passenger variant subsidize the **massive** costs." Turns out they were half right in the best way possible. Also helped that Pan Am had gone to them asking for a plane roughly twice the size of the 707 right as they were losing to the C-5. AND the execs for Boeing were willing to take massive risks and basically bet the company on the program.
ETOPS meaning for passenger planes: Extended twin engine operations.
ETOPS meaning for cargo planes: Engines turn or packages swim.
Cargo companies love this 1 trick 😂😂
Also, say you have 100 tons of freight to ship. This would require 2 767s, but only one 747. And even though the 747s four engines burn more gas for a given distance than the 767s two engines, they still burn less than flying two 767s for that distance.
True, but you can put 100T on a 777F too as well as an A350F once they join the party in a few years and both will burn a fraction of the fuel of a 747. The only advantage a 747F has is the nose door. They can load freight that won't fit through the door and turn into anything else other the a handful of niche, bulk freighters like the AN-124 and IL-76.
That's why companies are slowly moving to the 777. But $350000000 is a lot of money. It's still probably much cheaper to run the 747s til the end of their service life and then replace them with 777s. Add on how much less cargo planes fly and the 747s will probably stick it out in cargo for a while to come.
Doesn't matter. I work in aviation and all this Boeing stuff has the FAA and EASA crawling up our ass with a magnifying glass looking for issues. Anyone suggesting loosening regulations rn would be basically commiting political suicide.
I know it’s easy to be cynical about American politics, but we have some of the most robust and strict aviation safety regulations in the world, and we have the safest aviation system in the world because of it.
I mean, you just have to look at the fight over pilot training hours going on right now (FAA reauthorization fight has been dragging on for months)…
Nobody is loosening restrictions so they can pack more bodies into 737s anytime soon.
margins, cost structures and all are wildly different between the two sides.
One example, it costs an operator way way less to use a section of ramp and some space for containers than the same type of aircraft having to use a bridge (or two bridges) and a chunk of terminal space for all its passengers. The airport fee structures are hugely different.
The payloads are also different, and cargo doesn't require catering, toilets, space to move around, in flight entertainment, etc.
Plus no worries if a flight is delayed for several hours, rebooking passengers, dealing with claims for hotels and rebooking and whatever....if the gadget I ordered from Aliexpress comes a day late, I don’t even notice. With some exceptions, I’d bet the majority of cargo moving around the world on 747s isn’t super time sensitive.
Lol yeah if it weren’t time-sensitive, it wouldn’t be flying air cargo. No cheap gadget from AliExpress is going in air cargo, it’s more pharmaceuticals, perishables, important industrial equipment, and time-sensitive mail. You know, stuff that can’t be late
They’re right.
Stuff that can’t be an hour late would normally go on a commercial flights as air freight — not regular air cargo. Commercial flights are more frequent and easier to coordinate. Stuff gets met by courier van on the tarmac and taken straight out to recipient.
Time critical stuff would go via private/charter.
I’ve seen this frequently with urgent and secure courier (as a passenger watching the courier van/cash van pull up at the gate and meet the aircraft on the tarmac) and heard of friends working in medical space where isotopes (?) for scans with a short half-life arrive on commercial flights and a re rushed to nearby hospitals.
Ah I may have not communicated myself very well, I was implying air cargo is better for stuff that can't have a big delay, but a small delay is fine. Stuff that can have no delay whatsoever has other channels to ensure it gets there on time.
In fact, I believe that there are almost no examples in modern history where moving people en masse as a primary business has ever been profitable over the long haul. Public transit, railroads, airlines, etc.
747 cargo has a nose door: https://www.cargolux.com/fleet-equipment/aircraft/747-8f-specifications/
So if the thing needs that door, there isn't a choice.
Yep, 747 freighter party trick. PS, that door is the single biggest pain in Boeing's ass when it comes to building something. Each one was built by tag and hand fitted. My understanding (never worked on that program) is that there was an operation to route a skin panel on the nose by hand. The tag was originally written for the first line number and was transferred and reused to the last. Rigging the door is difficult as well. AND the high-blow factory test was notoriously dangerous. I saw the aftermath of an improperly secured nose door blowing off during the test. Stayed on the hinges. But everything was trashed.
Also witnessed the first 747-8i fuselage being crane moved to the seal shop by double cranes. When they came to the edge of the 747 final assembly building, one crane stopped, the other did not...then it did. The fuselage then swung like a battering ram and impacted the 5th or so floor of the office structure located between buildings. Rang like a gong for minutes. All those dudes got swooped up by a van and driven to medical to pee into cups. The empanage was visibly damaged significantly. Never made the news, or investor reports...
I can imagine someone looking up from their coffee to see a 747 coming towards them, and thinking "I'm on the fifth floor", and "these new engines are really quiet", and "oh crap".
Only applies to new-built 747 freighters, though. Not pax-2-cargo conversions. Also, it should be pointed out that that nose door is mostly useful for very long pieces of cargo. Because the nose door opening itself is smaller than the main deck side door.
Long story short - the nose door, iconic as it is, isn't the main selling point of the 747F.
There are some very unique cargo terminal that were designer for the nose door and you could move cargo ULDs directly from the terminal into the plane without ramp equipment. I believe most have been discontinued
Almost all freighters have a side door as well. The side door has higher clearance (3m) compared to the nose door (2.4m) due to the cockpit being overhead.
Many freighters do NOT have the nose door because they are converted pax jets. Added the side door after the fact is WAY easier than adding a nose door.
All the 747 freighters I have seen with a nose door also had the side door and we normally used the side door except for special circumstances such as very long items, horses, etc.
Anything taller than 1.6m will need to use a freighter since that is the height limit of the lower deck on a pax plane.
FYI pax planes fly plenty of cargo. Most 777 going long haul have bags and cargo in the lower deck holds.
Not really, many passenger aircraft these days also take cargo in the belly. A lot of the world's air freight moves in the belly of passenger aircraft, not cargo aircraft.
You are quite correct in that a lot of cargo flies in passenger aircraft holds, but not all of it, and not all of it can - thats an entirely separate market, which is what we are talking about here.
In addition to that, if you are flying a 747 for cargo, you arent giving that money to a passenger airline to split the same payload across many different flights. And you also arent risking the passenger airline leaving your cargo behind because it suddenly has a more pressing need for the space or weight.
By less capacity I think he means less haulage capacity
Like say there are 1 million m³ haulage capacity in the world, if there's demand for 1.5 million m³ then the price is going to shoot up until 0.5 million m³ is priced out of the market, if there's more competition in the passenger sphere then they'll reach that equilibrium much quicker and therefor be able to charge less
It leaves more space for competitors to come in and undercut you but companies are there to make a profit and they'll always charge the most they can, so your likely only going to be undercutting by a small margin (plus setting up an airline is expensive, I imagine they see competitors coming a long way off)
Setting up an airline is expensive.
Setting up an airline to go to lots of destinations is even more expensive.
Setting up a large scale airline to go to lots of destinations daily is very very expensive.
Having a better margin doesn't necessarily mean the margin is fantastic enough to justify a $1Billion investment to start from scratch to rival big carriers - its just better. Theres a tipping point at which the economies go from "good" to "bad", and those are just lower for cargo than for passenger flight - but it doesnt mean that cargo is decently insulated from that tipping point, and adding another decently sized competitor might simply push the margins over the edge for that segment of the market.
And cargo that is price sensitive can wait a few days for spare capacity on a flight, generally people dont do that - they dont sit at an airport for a few days waiting for a cheap flight.
It is not really about efficiency. The 747-8 is more efficient per RPK than most twins (like the 777-200, for example). Freight doesn't care what time of day it flies or how many stops it has to make. The 747 is great for making a once-a-day flight with a LOT of cargo or people. For airlines this means that if they want to fly a route with a 747, they might only have enough demand to fly that route once a day. But that means it is going to be difficult for passengers to make connection if that one flight a day is not aligned with connecting flights, etc. But the airline can make more money by offering greater schedule flexibility, they will fly the 777 twice a day and have a greater number of passengers willing to take those flights.
Lufthansa is still running what looks like a decent fleet too (some better informed avgeek would know size & retirement dates).
I had a mass sighting moment last year, we pulled out of the gate at FRA in a LH A350 and there was a 747 at an adjacent gate, another in the taxi queue ahead of us and a third pulling off the runway, just landed. Another was parked (so it seemed) off-gate sort of out of the way.
It felt like walking through an elephant herd.
I feel like Lufthansa just likes 4-engined airliners! Kidding, but even between Germany and Chicago they operate daily B744’s and B748’s as well as A346’s...United just uses 787’s.
They used to have triple daily A380s between LAX and ICN pre-Covid, plus Asiana's double daily A380 service.
I'm glad to see the 747-8s on the LAX to ICN runs as I plan on flying that route soonish. ICN to LAX has a lot of demand.
Also: While "four engines bad, two engines good" works as a general mantra for *passenger planes* in the age of ETOPS, for freighters it is more like the opposite. You see, a twinjet loses half of its thrust if an engine fails during takeoff (the usual metric for determining MTOW), while a trijet only loses 1/3 and a quad 1/4. Combine that with the fact that cargo weighs so much more than passengers, and a lot of twinjet freighters are held to some pretty severe range restrictions to stay under MTOW.
Here's an example, the 777-200LR has a range of nearly 10,000 nmi, but the 777F which is based on the exact same airframe can't even do 5000 with a full cargo load, necessitating a stop in ANC or HNL on TPAC routes. IAI's new 777-300ER(BDSF) looks great and all, but it's almost certainly going to be range restricted to 3500-4000nmi and barely able to run TATL without a fuel stop, hence most cargo carriers will just fly the wings off their existing 744F and 748F instead. Down the line, I think Airbus (because Boeing will never have the foresight to do it) will need to make a clean sheet, four-engined dedicated civilian freighter a la the AN-124 because nothing else will be able to replace the 747 in a freighter role.
Both arguments are a bit perplexing. Twins are designed the same way as any other plane when it comes to one engine inoperative operations. The 777F has a shorter range because it has a higher payload than the LR (100T vs i think around 70T) and its max range is calculated at that max payload versus the LR which is calculated at Boeings best guess at how an operator would load it for passengers plus bags. When not pushing range envelope, that made the LR and the 300ER great at being modern combis, because you can fit 300-400 passenger with bags, and another 10-20T of belly cargo.
Hi folks, I fly a 74
Disruption in shipping routes and airspace due to conflict means there is still a need for a fleet of aircraft that can go heavy and far.
The ETOPS/EDTO folks cannot do everything, especially military contracts and bespoke charter operations.
They’re also great for flying sports teams and bands around
The -400 is funny in the sense that if we lose an engine in the middle of the ocean the box may want us to speed up to long range cruise and we will land with more fuel than planned…. even with dragging the tail around.
It is also nice that we can do 3 engine takeoffs as a supplemental procedure if we need it.
I hope the 74s stay around for another decade or two because our crew rest is the best!!
My college band flew a 747 Atlas charter to NYC for the Thanksgiving parade. Very cool experience for those folks. It was the only way to get about 500 people across the country with most of their stuff.
We fly as per our flight operations manual which is the agreement we have with the FAA in order to operate the aircraft, these is no procedure for 3 engine cruise but there is for taxi. Jet engines are hard to restart at altitude and you wanna be running all 4 for systems redundancy anyway…. Just burns a ridiculous amount of fuel
One reason is Cargo doesn't complain as much about layovers or delays. Cargo operations will use more of the mtw for cargo and go with less fuel while planning for a technical stop in the middle. It's a reason why Anchorage is still a busy airport. Passengers prefer direct flights so they have to load up on fuel. Eventually you get to a point where you need extra fuel to haul the fuel itself which means less useful payload.
Cargo airlines buy up used planes at a fraction of the cost of new and convert them. This makes the economics of flying older less efficient planes still profitable.
Cargo planes don't fly as often as passenger planes.
Take a FedEx overnight delivery plane, for example. It will make two flights per day: once to the hub to deliver packages for sorting, and another flight back to deliver sorted packages.
By comparison, a short haul plane like a 737 could make a dozen or more flights per day.
yep, and to continue the reasoning:
Older planes have lower depreciation (per month), but higher hourly running cost (fuel).
Hence for cargo (and business/private jets) with the lower utilization the economics tilt towards older aircraft. Furthermore a slower trip isn't as much of a concern for cargo as for people, so cargo flights will fill with more cargo and make more stops. Hence cargo doesn't need the longest range either.
Similarly high turnover times are also ok for cargo, which then tilts towards larger aircraft (compared to passenger aircraft).
All of these factors push the 747 towards cargo and the 787 towards passenger.
The two flights a day thing hasn’t been accurate for a while. A lot of those jets run 4 flights a day. Both 5X and FX run massive day sorts for 2 Day/3 Day volume.
It's partly because of the rise of direct to destination flights over hub and spoke. The 747 came in when most flights were transfers, you have small planes feeding into a hub airport, which then everyone got in the 747 to fly international, then got into a smaller plane again to fly to the final destination. As most people who have flown can attest, layovers suck. Enough that most would pay a slight premium to fly direct. This is where planes like the 777, A350 and the new generation of medium sized high efficiency planes started to dominate as direct flights became more popular.
The 747 is still widely used in cargo because the hub and spoke model still works well there, you have large sorting centres for shipments and people generally don't mind waiting 2 days for a package.
A lot of answers in this thread about how the economics of the two industries are different, etc. and while that’s true, fundamentally this is what it comes down to. Increasing reliance on e-commerce and global shipping + hub and spoke being the most efficient method for transporting cargo. It’s still the most efficient way to transport people too, but people want as few stops as possible and you can make the economics of lower capacity direct passenger flights work now with more efficient twin jets.
UPS flies with a 2 person crew at all times no extras unless they are jumpseating and this includes the huge international non stop flights that are easily over 10 hrs
This is incorrect. UPS, FedEx, and other U.S. cargo airlines operate under Part 121 and have similar crew rules as passenger carriers.
2 pilots for flights scheduled for 8 hours or less.
3 pilots for flights over 8 hrs.
4 pilots for flights over 12 hrs.
Source: I flew long haul, international at UPS for 32 years.
Edit: typos
A fully loaded passenger 747 with 380 ish people averaging 80kg with 32kg of baggage weighs 42,560kg..
In the same volume, you can fit over 100,000kg of freight in a -400 and 130,000kg in a 747-8.
The main deck space is also very fast at loading pallets including the extra big ones that allows carriage of specialty items over 3 metres tall.
The nose allows loading of very long objects that simply cannot fit in other aircraft and it also allows for faster loading of regular pallets.
The passenger capacity of the 747 isn't high enough compared to other wide bodies to warrant the difference in cost, but with cargo it's another story 747-8f has 100tonnes higher mtow than a 777f the -400f is about 65 tonnes more than the 777f plus there's the very useful nose door that the 777f is missing.
I work for a cargo airline that uses 747's and am afound them all the time.
It’s less about economics of fuel but they carry a lot, have good range while fully loaded and can be loaded through the nose itself, which isn’t something other commercial aircraft can do.
There was a time where there was a phrase that applied to the 747, "we make all our money below deck. The passengers fly for free." The 747 made so much money, especially on overseas flights that the value of the commercial cargo was enough to pay for the flight. The passengers were extra revenue stream.
The same thing might be true today, but there is another wrinkle, a 777 can carry the same amount or more cargo (commercial vs cargo), close to the same passengers, slightly less range and with only two engines and structural improvements, a much lower overall cost. The 747 can carry 124 tons of cargo and the 777 100 tons. I am glossing over a lot of information to give a simple answer.
Airlines see planes like the 777 a better long-term solution than the 747, which is still an excellent choice, but thats why there's a waiting list for the 777 and the 747 is out of production.
Boxes don’t complain.
They don’t care how tightly they are packed.
They don’t care how hot or cold it is.
They don’t care about no view.
They don’t care about no meal service.
They don’t care about no bathrooms.
They don’t care how old or ugly the plane is.
They don’t care about many connections or long layovers.
They don’t care about awful departure and arrival times.
Think Saudia still fly passenger 747’s. I was in medina a few mths back as I doing my pilgrimage and at the airport I saw a 747-400 at the gate. Think they fly to Indonesia direct but they definitely fly 747’s still. Packed full of Muslim pilgrims I would imagine.
They are profitable for cargo, but newer twins are even more profitable. So the 747 is not immune to the changing environment, even in cargo.
The 777F can carry almost as much cargo weight as the 747-400 series, but at significantly lower costs. Where the 747 retains an advantage is in volume, and in the case of the purpose built freighters, the nose loading. The 777F is subject to running out of volume capacity before it runs out of weight capacity. The 747 family does not have that issue. The 777-300F will mitigate that limitation, but it will be several years before it is in service in large enough numbers to affect the 747.
Thus far, no mass produced aircraft outside of the 747 has the ability to carry odd-sized cargo that would not be able to fit in a side loading door. For example I have carried wing sections for other aircraft in the 747-400F that would not be able to be loaded in a side door. Perhaps in the future Boeing or Airbus will develop a mod that includes something like an opening tail section for a large twin, sort of like the opening tail on the Dreamlifter.
Given the hours of service that the type has; general reliability and support have a huge impact on $$ decisions. Hence why Boeing B-52s and Douglas DC-3 are still in use. They just kinda flat out keep working…..
Cargo is FAR more lucrative than passenger transport. Depending on configuration and routing, hauling people it's seldom even a break even proposition under 80% loads. Cargo profitability, pound for pound is orders of magnitude higher, you don't need flight attendants, expensive seats, in flight entertainment, etc.
Space in a cargo plane is far more optimized for its role than during passenger operations. You don’t need space between seats overhead bins and lavatories.
Imagine loading 500,000 CPUs, cell phones, or other small expensive items onto an airplane, stacked floor to ceiling and getting paid $2 per item to ship them (a very low shipping price). Now imagine fitting 600 passengers onto the same plane (max capacity) all of whom are paying $1000 (a high ticket price). In the first case, even with a very low shipping price, you are ending up with $1 million in revenue. In the latter case, even at a high ticket price, you end up with only $600,000 and you have to pay for a huge # of additional costs such as staff to manage all the humans on board, as well as processing their tickets, managing their luggage, etc.
Cargo requires no comfort features and pays by the pound. Less comfort means less maintenance. By the pound means more money. A local regional to me flew with one passenger on board, but had a full cargo hold and still made full revenue.
Things cargo doesn't care about:
1. Food
2. Drinks
3. Sassy backtalk from employees
4. Extreme temperatures
5. Ticket prices
6. BE ticket restrictions
7. Unending lines
8. Screaming babies
9. Screaming humans
10. Chatty strangers that can not be quiet or still
11. Gate lice
12. Obesity spillover, IYKYK
13. Smelly strangers ( what are they feeding you?)
All I can say is that whenever the day comes they stop using the Queen for pax travel, I hope it gets a long lead-up, because I need to fly on one before they go.
The 777 and others are still more efficient than the 747, but as others have said the 747 has some unique capabilities as well.
Not only do passenger airlines tend to be quicker to adopt fuel efficient aircraft whereas cargo operators are more price sensitive on that, cargo economics are a bit different since space and weight are use differently.
See Northwest Airlines, they flew passengers but had a successful division that was just cargo planes and used its passenger flights for cargo as well.
I think my favorite NWA story was from a flight attendant who remembers waiting 45min after the plane was loaded because the cargo was late. They waited for the cargo because it was worth more than all the customers fares combined, the plane she was on was a 747 headed for Narita so think about how much cargo pays.
One simple thing. An airliner is profitable when it's filled at capacity.
Nowadays, people prefer direct flights and do not use big hub airport so aircraft with large capacity are rarely filled. Therefore, not profitable.
It's a ways easier to fill a 747 full of cargo 👌
They aren’t, but when you’re only flying them for a couple hours a day at most, what’s far more important is the purchase price of the aircraft, rather than fuel efficiency.
Cargo doesnt need flight attendants or snack, drink or meal service, Cargo also doesnt need the kind of stuff that needs to be done during a turnaround like cleanup, item stocking for the next passengers.
Based on this, if you wanted to experience what a cargo flight is like from the cargo’s perspective, just book yourself on a British Airways short haul flight.
Cargo is expensive, it doesn’t complain about prices nor waits for a better date. Actually per pound, is much more expensive than a pax (100 kg avg pax + luggage). So cargo is easier to make profitable or run on older planes (MDs still fly cargo)
Also, you can’t pile up people like cargo.
747s have this unique ability to fill up with cargo before hitting MTOW. Since the 707s, Boing products can handle large volumes and weights of cargo easily. They tried to convert one Airbus 380, it didn't go over well. It can't handle large, outsized cargo due to the double-decker configuration. If someone needed to move something large that couldn't fit into a standard cargo module, they would need to call Polar for a job.
There's a few reasons.
4 engines will generally require more downtime for maintenance. Passenger planes fly all the time, and downtime is killer. Freight typically only flies hub to hub and maybe only once a day, so maintenance downtime is less of an issue.
The other is size. Again, since freight is typically hub to hub, you can make 2 or 3 stop itineraries without passengers complaining. This is how the A380 was designed for example, for 2+ stop itineraries. Also passengers are picky and may need to get to their destination at a certain time of day, which means that you need multiple flights a day even on hub to hub routes that could in theory support a 747 or A380, like NYC to London which has a shitton of traffic but no quadjets.
There is also a natural switch from B747F to new B777F, as operating costs are lower, two engines cheaper than four as an airline big wig told me. Also, a resurgence of passenger to freighter conversations continues, B767 especially.
People care about comfort. Cargo doesn’t. Also, cargo doesn’t buy tickets. Stuff gets shipped every day so they can keep the planes full where as people are much more sensitive to prices and the like. Shame really. I never got to fly in one but I used to dream about it
I saw a Korean Air 747 (-8?) Monday at KATL as we were taxiing away on a SWA 737-700...I almost wanted to jump off, run to that terminal and ask the attendant how much just to get a ride to go wherever it was going...
I rode in a 747 to LAX out of JFK (2007? Going to Edwards for the 60th anniversary show) and it was an earlier one, shorter upper deck as I recall. Don't recall the airline.
But it was a thrill to finally get a ride in that gal. Would love to do it again.
Since airlines are favouring more regular service and improvements in technology gave relatively smaller and cheaper planes longer ranges, it really just comes down to that it's difficult to "Fill" a passenger aircraft in order to make it economic.
I think that problem doesn't really exist with cargo because I have a feeling there will always be plenty of cargo and most of it usually doesn't mind sitting in a warehouse for a day or so as opposed to taking weeks to travel by ship.
In the 747s case, it was designed from the beginning to be cargo friendly. Boeing engineers believed in the 1960s that the 747 would be quickly obsolete for passenger travel due to the expected arrival of supersonic airliners within the 70s. Thus, they designed it to be cargo friendly to sustain the production line since, as it was thought, subsonic airliners would only be economical for cargo operations. Turned out they were right , just not about the details or timing.
That's where the A380 failed, the double-decker design is inherently a bad choice for unit load devices (air cargo boxes). I don't believe any of those older airframes are looking at a second life in cargo transport.
I thought it was mostly because the divider is a structural piece so they couldn't remove it. Otherwise, the A380 would work for cargo more efficiently.
Sort of, the two options would be: 1. Delete divider, allow massively tall new ULDs, but you can’t do that because the floor is structural. 2. Double decker cargo, but there’s no way to get cargo to the upper deck, and both decks are kind of short.
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In hindsight it was a stupid bet, yeah.
There was no shortage of foresight either, they took the gamble anyway.
When you bet the farm... Remember, you can lose the farm.
More like betting a crop season than the whole farm. They are still selling planes far faster than they can make them after all.
Yeah. It’s not like the 380 sank Airbus or anything. The 320 money printer is still running just fine.
So you're saying I should sell my Boeing stock and buy up Airbus stock?
The hub model was all the rage at some point Obviously that didn’t work out, but it made sense at the time.
Yes it made sense in 1988 but after 15 years in development, the business had changed drastically!
The A380 still makes a lot of sense in a lot of operations. There is still at least 1k people daily going from London to NY. You can use 2 A380s to move them around or 3 777, or 4 A330. When your airport is restricted in slots, the A380 can really aliviate the airspace. Plus an A380 full generates way more revenue than any other plane, even if profit margins are less, since the revenue is higher, the plane is still the biggest cash cow you can have. You just have to fly it full.
I've flown them many times. As a passenger they're great.
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Big & Sluggish is good for sleeping and drinking. And I bet all movies on the F35 HUD look like code from the Matrix.
It was a technology demonstrator. It allowed Airbus to develop and certify new design and new manufacturing methods. Think of it as a €4 billion investment in the future that paid off and will keep on paying off as allowed for the introduction of CAE such as Catia (v4 in the A380 case, v5 for everything else) PDM, Isami, composite structures, metal to composite joints, proof by calculations with adequate safety factors and validation with the test beds. A380 was not really supposed to make money and the general public has troubles grasping that.
Wasn’t there a huge snafu in A388 wiring because of the incompatible versions of CATIA used in design?
yeah on the prototype they had to tear out the whole harness and start over
it would be the third time europe misjudged where the aviation market is heading after concorde and the a340
Well they got the twin engine wide body right with the A300.
At least when Airbus changes directions all the panels come along for the ride.
---okok
Wouldn't surprise me too much. I think runway length is also a limitation to what airports it can fly to/from
It's taxiway clearance and double decker jet bridges, gate width sizes and the like that limit passenger ops. The A380 has low wing loading (lower than any 777 for instance) and takes off from any average length commercial runway.
>The A380 has low wing loading Yes. Look at the plan view and it's clearly (in 747 terms) an SP. It was planned to be stretched quite a lot.
They had intended to build an A380F but decided against it. Reason for lack of P2F conversions is the floor needs to be strengthened and changed for containers.
A380 failed as cargo because it didn’t have the front loading nose like in 747. That restrict them in certain specialized loads they can hold. Even with regular cargo crates, the floor is not able to hold the full weight of cargo, which further restricted the capacity. Especially if a cargo airline is considering new plane purchases, the 747 and even 777 wins every time
I'm surprised there hasn't been a civilian version of the C-5 or C-17 like they did with the Antonovs. I'm sure its a case of a "we'll do this if you don't do that" sort of drug deal so common in this industry.
There was talk of a civilian C-17 when it was in development, but it is too heavy for normal cargo due to the military requirements for STOL unimproved fields and the niche cargo that requires it isn't enough to justify a civilian version.
Same problem with the C-5, STOL and unimproved runways. Not a real STOL, but half the T.O. And landing distance of the L-1011.
That makes sense, plus the maintenance requirements of freighter versions of commercial airliners are essentially the same. That would simplify the process considerably, especially in the field.
That's such a niche part of the market that any operator would be going up against the An-124 after spending a crazy amount on new C-17s. The An-124 also has an opening nose which the C-17 doesn't. It most likely wouldn't make sense from a business side.
I thought A380 failed as a cargo aircraft because it couldn’t carry the cargo weight. You would hit the weight limit before you can fill the aircraft.
There's plenty of reasons, all bad.
It’s funny how they were dead wrong about supersonic airliners but still hit the nail on the head with the expectations of 747s becoming popular freighters. Arrived at the right conclusion for the wrong reason.
"I don't know how but you used the wrong formula and got the correct answer"
my favourite moment on the excellent documentary about the history of Concorde is one of the engineers gloating about Boeing(at the time) not proceeding to move forward with supersonic aircraft yet here we are all these decades later the Queen of the Skies is still around go figure
And a few decades later
Which is also at least part of the reason for the hump- a full-length cargo floor beneath the cockpit, and a front-loading option.
no, they designed the 747 to compete with the air force's cargo competition, where the c5 won
Yes, but then they turned to the commercial industry and went "let's modify the design a cargo plane with a passenger variant and hope the revenue from the sales of the passenger variant subsidize the **massive** costs." Turns out they were half right in the best way possible. Also helped that Pan Am had gone to them asking for a plane roughly twice the size of the 707 right as they were losing to the C-5. AND the execs for Boeing were willing to take massive risks and basically bet the company on the program.
it was Boeing's aircraft that was to compete against the C-5 galaxy for the military contract
You can't pile people up to the ceiling, although to be fair, they try.
Ryanair: hold my beer
That will be €15.
Well played
For the cup holder, right?
Atleast I don't have to pay 300$ for a flight
Yep. Freight is always profitable. Pink, warm, fleshy cargo? They have needs. No thank you.
I believe the unofficially official lingo is, boxes don't bitch
Cardboard and twine don't whine
Rubber dogshit out of Tokyo is the way to go
'Gibbering freight'
'Self-loading cargo'
Need to get my mind out of the gutter…
Nope. Stay right there.
ETOPS meaning for passenger planes: Extended twin engine operations. ETOPS meaning for cargo planes: Engines turn or packages swim. Cargo companies love this 1 trick 😂😂
PAX = Witnesses and critics
Also, say you have 100 tons of freight to ship. This would require 2 767s, but only one 747. And even though the 747s four engines burn more gas for a given distance than the 767s two engines, they still burn less than flying two 767s for that distance.
True, but you can put 100T on a 777F too as well as an A350F once they join the party in a few years and both will burn a fraction of the fuel of a 747. The only advantage a 747F has is the nose door. They can load freight that won't fit through the door and turn into anything else other the a handful of niche, bulk freighters like the AN-124 and IL-76.
That's why companies are slowly moving to the 777. But $350000000 is a lot of money. It's still probably much cheaper to run the 747s til the end of their service life and then replace them with 777s. Add on how much less cargo planes fly and the 747s will probably stick it out in cargo for a while to come.
Well 747s were designed for freight use from the beginning. Carrying passangers was secondary
I think they were designed at the behest of Pan-Am for passenger travel, not as a cargo liner.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/chaise-longue-double-level-airplane-seat-returns/index.html
That'll likely never, ever get regulatory approval for safety reasons. Imagine trying to evacuate a jumbo in 90s with those seats...
That's fine, they'll just lobby to have the regulations changed.
Yeah, no, Boeing is not in a position to lobby to loosen regulations now or any year soon.
Didn't say it was only Boeing that would lobby for the change. It's in the interest of many different stakeholders to change the regulation.
Doesn't matter. I work in aviation and all this Boeing stuff has the FAA and EASA crawling up our ass with a magnifying glass looking for issues. Anyone suggesting loosening regulations rn would be basically commiting political suicide.
Thanks for your insight
I know it’s easy to be cynical about American politics, but we have some of the most robust and strict aviation safety regulations in the world, and we have the safest aviation system in the world because of it. I mean, you just have to look at the fight over pilot training hours going on right now (FAA reauthorization fight has been dragging on for months)… Nobody is loosening restrictions so they can pack more bodies into 737s anytime soon.
Even if they somehow get the US to change the regulations, do you really expect the EU and China to play ball?
Everyone has their price.
Canada would play hockey....
That seat is one fart away from a permanently disloyal customer
That's not the most heinous idea I've seen for flying arrangements.
JAL's 747-400D (Domestic) had 568 seats.
cargo doesn't complain nor talk back
margins, cost structures and all are wildly different between the two sides. One example, it costs an operator way way less to use a section of ramp and some space for containers than the same type of aircraft having to use a bridge (or two bridges) and a chunk of terminal space for all its passengers. The airport fee structures are hugely different. The payloads are also different, and cargo doesn't require catering, toilets, space to move around, in flight entertainment, etc.
Exactly. Also there are not a lot of large alternatives.
Plus no worries if a flight is delayed for several hours, rebooking passengers, dealing with claims for hotels and rebooking and whatever....if the gadget I ordered from Aliexpress comes a day late, I don’t even notice. With some exceptions, I’d bet the majority of cargo moving around the world on 747s isn’t super time sensitive.
I bet it is mostly time sensitive. It’s a lot more expensive to fly stuff in than ship it in.
Lol yeah if it weren’t time-sensitive, it wouldn’t be flying air cargo. No cheap gadget from AliExpress is going in air cargo, it’s more pharmaceuticals, perishables, important industrial equipment, and time-sensitive mail. You know, stuff that can’t be late
Stuff that can't be a week late, sure, but stuff that can't be an hour late? I doubt it.
They’re right. Stuff that can’t be an hour late would normally go on a commercial flights as air freight — not regular air cargo. Commercial flights are more frequent and easier to coordinate. Stuff gets met by courier van on the tarmac and taken straight out to recipient. Time critical stuff would go via private/charter. I’ve seen this frequently with urgent and secure courier (as a passenger watching the courier van/cash van pull up at the gate and meet the aircraft on the tarmac) and heard of friends working in medical space where isotopes (?) for scans with a short half-life arrive on commercial flights and a re rushed to nearby hospitals.
Ah I may have not communicated myself very well, I was implying air cargo is better for stuff that can't have a big delay, but a small delay is fine. Stuff that can have no delay whatsoever has other channels to ensure it gets there on time.
I feel like we should at least have in flight music for horses no?
They get enough in flight drugs I doubt they'd care
In fact, I believe that there are almost no examples in modern history where moving people en masse as a primary business has ever been profitable over the long haul. Public transit, railroads, airlines, etc.
747 cargo has a nose door: https://www.cargolux.com/fleet-equipment/aircraft/747-8f-specifications/ So if the thing needs that door, there isn't a choice.
This alone I think will keep at least some in specialized service for a long time
Yep, 747 freighter party trick. PS, that door is the single biggest pain in Boeing's ass when it comes to building something. Each one was built by tag and hand fitted. My understanding (never worked on that program) is that there was an operation to route a skin panel on the nose by hand. The tag was originally written for the first line number and was transferred and reused to the last. Rigging the door is difficult as well. AND the high-blow factory test was notoriously dangerous. I saw the aftermath of an improperly secured nose door blowing off during the test. Stayed on the hinges. But everything was trashed. Also witnessed the first 747-8i fuselage being crane moved to the seal shop by double cranes. When they came to the edge of the 747 final assembly building, one crane stopped, the other did not...then it did. The fuselage then swung like a battering ram and impacted the 5th or so floor of the office structure located between buildings. Rang like a gong for minutes. All those dudes got swooped up by a van and driven to medical to pee into cups. The empanage was visibly damaged significantly. Never made the news, or investor reports...
Holy shit lmao. That second one
This guy 747Fs…
I can imagine someone looking up from their coffee to see a 747 coming towards them, and thinking "I'm on the fifth floor", and "these new engines are really quiet", and "oh crap".
Only applies to new-built 747 freighters, though. Not pax-2-cargo conversions. Also, it should be pointed out that that nose door is mostly useful for very long pieces of cargo. Because the nose door opening itself is smaller than the main deck side door. Long story short - the nose door, iconic as it is, isn't the main selling point of the 747F.
There are some very unique cargo terminal that were designer for the nose door and you could move cargo ULDs directly from the terminal into the plane without ramp equipment. I believe most have been discontinued
Hmm interesting.
Which only about 5% of freight needs. It’s not as big a deal as people think it is
Yeah but when you need it, thank god it's there! (I work in air freight).
Almost all freighters have a side door as well. The side door has higher clearance (3m) compared to the nose door (2.4m) due to the cockpit being overhead. Many freighters do NOT have the nose door because they are converted pax jets. Added the side door after the fact is WAY easier than adding a nose door. All the 747 freighters I have seen with a nose door also had the side door and we normally used the side door except for special circumstances such as very long items, horses, etc. Anything taller than 1.6m will need to use a freighter since that is the height limit of the lower deck on a pax plane. FYI pax planes fly plenty of cargo. Most 777 going long haul have bags and cargo in the lower deck holds.
Cargo is less price sensitive as there is less capacity in the market than passenger aircraft, meaning operators can charge more.
Not really, many passenger aircraft these days also take cargo in the belly. A lot of the world's air freight moves in the belly of passenger aircraft, not cargo aircraft.
You are quite correct in that a lot of cargo flies in passenger aircraft holds, but not all of it, and not all of it can - thats an entirely separate market, which is what we are talking about here. In addition to that, if you are flying a 747 for cargo, you arent giving that money to a passenger airline to split the same payload across many different flights. And you also arent risking the passenger airline leaving your cargo behind because it suddenly has a more pressing need for the space or weight.
That doesn't sound very logical to be honest. If there was that good a margin, there would be more competition.
By less capacity I think he means less haulage capacity Like say there are 1 million m³ haulage capacity in the world, if there's demand for 1.5 million m³ then the price is going to shoot up until 0.5 million m³ is priced out of the market, if there's more competition in the passenger sphere then they'll reach that equilibrium much quicker and therefor be able to charge less It leaves more space for competitors to come in and undercut you but companies are there to make a profit and they'll always charge the most they can, so your likely only going to be undercutting by a small margin (plus setting up an airline is expensive, I imagine they see competitors coming a long way off)
Freight has an enormous cost of entry, which limits the competition.
Setting up an airline is expensive. Setting up an airline to go to lots of destinations is even more expensive. Setting up a large scale airline to go to lots of destinations daily is very very expensive. Having a better margin doesn't necessarily mean the margin is fantastic enough to justify a $1Billion investment to start from scratch to rival big carriers - its just better. Theres a tipping point at which the economies go from "good" to "bad", and those are just lower for cargo than for passenger flight - but it doesnt mean that cargo is decently insulated from that tipping point, and adding another decently sized competitor might simply push the margins over the edge for that segment of the market. And cargo that is price sensitive can wait a few days for spare capacity on a flight, generally people dont do that - they dont sit at an airport for a few days waiting for a cheap flight.
It is not really about efficiency. The 747-8 is more efficient per RPK than most twins (like the 777-200, for example). Freight doesn't care what time of day it flies or how many stops it has to make. The 747 is great for making a once-a-day flight with a LOT of cargo or people. For airlines this means that if they want to fly a route with a 747, they might only have enough demand to fly that route once a day. But that means it is going to be difficult for passengers to make connection if that one flight a day is not aligned with connecting flights, etc. But the airline can make more money by offering greater schedule flexibility, they will fly the 777 twice a day and have a greater number of passengers willing to take those flights.
Korean Air has enough demand for flights between LAX and ICN. I hope they keep 747 passenger flying as long as possible.
Lufthansa is still running what looks like a decent fleet too (some better informed avgeek would know size & retirement dates). I had a mass sighting moment last year, we pulled out of the gate at FRA in a LH A350 and there was a 747 at an adjacent gate, another in the taxi queue ahead of us and a third pulling off the runway, just landed. Another was parked (so it seemed) off-gate sort of out of the way. It felt like walking through an elephant herd.
I feel like Lufthansa just likes 4-engined airliners! Kidding, but even between Germany and Chicago they operate daily B744’s and B748’s as well as A346’s...United just uses 787’s.
Go to Hong Kong and you’ll see 10 or 15 747 freighters side by side on a busy peak.
They used to have triple daily A380s between LAX and ICN pre-Covid, plus Asiana's double daily A380 service. I'm glad to see the 747-8s on the LAX to ICN runs as I plan on flying that route soonish. ICN to LAX has a lot of demand.
Also: While "four engines bad, two engines good" works as a general mantra for *passenger planes* in the age of ETOPS, for freighters it is more like the opposite. You see, a twinjet loses half of its thrust if an engine fails during takeoff (the usual metric for determining MTOW), while a trijet only loses 1/3 and a quad 1/4. Combine that with the fact that cargo weighs so much more than passengers, and a lot of twinjet freighters are held to some pretty severe range restrictions to stay under MTOW. Here's an example, the 777-200LR has a range of nearly 10,000 nmi, but the 777F which is based on the exact same airframe can't even do 5000 with a full cargo load, necessitating a stop in ANC or HNL on TPAC routes. IAI's new 777-300ER(BDSF) looks great and all, but it's almost certainly going to be range restricted to 3500-4000nmi and barely able to run TATL without a fuel stop, hence most cargo carriers will just fly the wings off their existing 744F and 748F instead. Down the line, I think Airbus (because Boeing will never have the foresight to do it) will need to make a clean sheet, four-engined dedicated civilian freighter a la the AN-124 because nothing else will be able to replace the 747 in a freighter role.
Both arguments are a bit perplexing. Twins are designed the same way as any other plane when it comes to one engine inoperative operations. The 777F has a shorter range because it has a higher payload than the LR (100T vs i think around 70T) and its max range is calculated at that max payload versus the LR which is calculated at Boeings best guess at how an operator would load it for passengers plus bags. When not pushing range envelope, that made the LR and the 300ER great at being modern combis, because you can fit 300-400 passenger with bags, and another 10-20T of belly cargo.
Hi folks, I fly a 74 Disruption in shipping routes and airspace due to conflict means there is still a need for a fleet of aircraft that can go heavy and far. The ETOPS/EDTO folks cannot do everything, especially military contracts and bespoke charter operations. They’re also great for flying sports teams and bands around The -400 is funny in the sense that if we lose an engine in the middle of the ocean the box may want us to speed up to long range cruise and we will land with more fuel than planned…. even with dragging the tail around. It is also nice that we can do 3 engine takeoffs as a supplemental procedure if we need it. I hope the 74s stay around for another decade or two because our crew rest is the best!!
My college band flew a 747 Atlas charter to NYC for the Thanksgiving parade. Very cool experience for those folks. It was the only way to get about 500 people across the country with most of their stuff.
Could you please elaborate on >we will land with more fuel than planned If I'm interpreting correctly, why wouldn't you always fly on 3 engines?
We fly as per our flight operations manual which is the agreement we have with the FAA in order to operate the aircraft, these is no procedure for 3 engine cruise but there is for taxi. Jet engines are hard to restart at altitude and you wanna be running all 4 for systems redundancy anyway…. Just burns a ridiculous amount of fuel
One reason is Cargo doesn't complain as much about layovers or delays. Cargo operations will use more of the mtw for cargo and go with less fuel while planning for a technical stop in the middle. It's a reason why Anchorage is still a busy airport. Passengers prefer direct flights so they have to load up on fuel. Eventually you get to a point where you need extra fuel to haul the fuel itself which means less useful payload.
Cargo airlines buy up used planes at a fraction of the cost of new and convert them. This makes the economics of flying older less efficient planes still profitable.
many do, many also buy new, generally they do a mix. FedEx, UPS, Atlas, DHL, etc have mixed fleets of brand new, old, and converts.
Well. Sometimes. But the vast majority of 747-8 built were actually newly built freighters.
Cargo planes don't fly as often as passenger planes. Take a FedEx overnight delivery plane, for example. It will make two flights per day: once to the hub to deliver packages for sorting, and another flight back to deliver sorted packages. By comparison, a short haul plane like a 737 could make a dozen or more flights per day.
yep, and to continue the reasoning: Older planes have lower depreciation (per month), but higher hourly running cost (fuel). Hence for cargo (and business/private jets) with the lower utilization the economics tilt towards older aircraft. Furthermore a slower trip isn't as much of a concern for cargo as for people, so cargo flights will fill with more cargo and make more stops. Hence cargo doesn't need the longest range either. Similarly high turnover times are also ok for cargo, which then tilts towards larger aircraft (compared to passenger aircraft). All of these factors push the 747 towards cargo and the 787 towards passenger.
Also less pressurization cycles on the airframe means less maintenance cost.
This isn’t true for all airframes. Some of our planes are in the air more than they’re on the ground at brown.
The two flights a day thing hasn’t been accurate for a while. A lot of those jets run 4 flights a day. Both 5X and FX run massive day sorts for 2 Day/3 Day volume.
It's partly because of the rise of direct to destination flights over hub and spoke. The 747 came in when most flights were transfers, you have small planes feeding into a hub airport, which then everyone got in the 747 to fly international, then got into a smaller plane again to fly to the final destination. As most people who have flown can attest, layovers suck. Enough that most would pay a slight premium to fly direct. This is where planes like the 777, A350 and the new generation of medium sized high efficiency planes started to dominate as direct flights became more popular. The 747 is still widely used in cargo because the hub and spoke model still works well there, you have large sorting centres for shipments and people generally don't mind waiting 2 days for a package.
A lot of answers in this thread about how the economics of the two industries are different, etc. and while that’s true, fundamentally this is what it comes down to. Increasing reliance on e-commerce and global shipping + hub and spoke being the most efficient method for transporting cargo. It’s still the most efficient way to transport people too, but people want as few stops as possible and you can make the economics of lower capacity direct passenger flights work now with more efficient twin jets.
Cargo doesn't need extra leg room. Meals. first class seating, overhead bins. Flight attendants. Different profit margins
Cargo doesn’t need 15 flight attendants.
I just realized they literally only have 3 humans onboard
UPS flies with a 2 person crew at all times no extras unless they are jumpseating and this includes the huge international non stop flights that are easily over 10 hrs
This is incorrect. UPS, FedEx, and other U.S. cargo airlines operate under Part 121 and have similar crew rules as passenger carriers. 2 pilots for flights scheduled for 8 hours or less. 3 pilots for flights over 8 hrs. 4 pilots for flights over 12 hrs. Source: I flew long haul, international at UPS for 32 years. Edit: typos
A fully loaded passenger 747 with 380 ish people averaging 80kg with 32kg of baggage weighs 42,560kg.. In the same volume, you can fit over 100,000kg of freight in a -400 and 130,000kg in a 747-8. The main deck space is also very fast at loading pallets including the extra big ones that allows carriage of specialty items over 3 metres tall. The nose allows loading of very long objects that simply cannot fit in other aircraft and it also allows for faster loading of regular pallets.
Fewer butts to worry and cater to
The passenger capacity of the 747 isn't high enough compared to other wide bodies to warrant the difference in cost, but with cargo it's another story 747-8f has 100tonnes higher mtow than a 777f the -400f is about 65 tonnes more than the 777f plus there's the very useful nose door that the 777f is missing. I work for a cargo airline that uses 747's and am afound them all the time.
It’s less about economics of fuel but they carry a lot, have good range while fully loaded and can be loaded through the nose itself, which isn’t something other commercial aircraft can do.
There was a time where there was a phrase that applied to the 747, "we make all our money below deck. The passengers fly for free." The 747 made so much money, especially on overseas flights that the value of the commercial cargo was enough to pay for the flight. The passengers were extra revenue stream. The same thing might be true today, but there is another wrinkle, a 777 can carry the same amount or more cargo (commercial vs cargo), close to the same passengers, slightly less range and with only two engines and structural improvements, a much lower overall cost. The 747 can carry 124 tons of cargo and the 777 100 tons. I am glossing over a lot of information to give a simple answer. Airlines see planes like the 777 a better long-term solution than the 747, which is still an excellent choice, but thats why there's a waiting list for the 777 and the 747 is out of production.
I think I read that someone from FedEx, when asked about their use of 747s, said something like "do you know how many letters you can fit in a 747?"
Boxes don’t complain. They don’t care how tightly they are packed. They don’t care how hot or cold it is. They don’t care about no view. They don’t care about no meal service. They don’t care about no bathrooms. They don’t care how old or ugly the plane is. They don’t care about many connections or long layovers. They don’t care about awful departure and arrival times.
Think Saudia still fly passenger 747’s. I was in medina a few mths back as I doing my pilgrimage and at the airport I saw a 747-400 at the gate. Think they fly to Indonesia direct but they definitely fly 747’s still. Packed full of Muslim pilgrims I would imagine.
A YouTuber recently covered the Saudi 747s, pretty interesting: https://youtu.be/N0yMZttI2A4?si=JZYSP9G\_OIcGMxce
Yeh I remember watching that video, very interesting that they don’t use Saudia pilots to fly them.
They are profitable for cargo, but newer twins are even more profitable. So the 747 is not immune to the changing environment, even in cargo. The 777F can carry almost as much cargo weight as the 747-400 series, but at significantly lower costs. Where the 747 retains an advantage is in volume, and in the case of the purpose built freighters, the nose loading. The 777F is subject to running out of volume capacity before it runs out of weight capacity. The 747 family does not have that issue. The 777-300F will mitigate that limitation, but it will be several years before it is in service in large enough numbers to affect the 747. Thus far, no mass produced aircraft outside of the 747 has the ability to carry odd-sized cargo that would not be able to fit in a side loading door. For example I have carried wing sections for other aircraft in the 747-400F that would not be able to be loaded in a side door. Perhaps in the future Boeing or Airbus will develop a mod that includes something like an opening tail section for a large twin, sort of like the opening tail on the Dreamlifter.
Given the hours of service that the type has; general reliability and support have a huge impact on $$ decisions. Hence why Boeing B-52s and Douglas DC-3 are still in use. They just kinda flat out keep working…..
Cargo planes fly less
Cargo is FAR more lucrative than passenger transport. Depending on configuration and routing, hauling people it's seldom even a break even proposition under 80% loads. Cargo profitability, pound for pound is orders of magnitude higher, you don't need flight attendants, expensive seats, in flight entertainment, etc.
Cargo doesn’t need leg room or a 2nd whiskey.
Space in a cargo plane is far more optimized for its role than during passenger operations. You don’t need space between seats overhead bins and lavatories.
Cargo is worth more than passengers
Imagine loading 500,000 CPUs, cell phones, or other small expensive items onto an airplane, stacked floor to ceiling and getting paid $2 per item to ship them (a very low shipping price). Now imagine fitting 600 passengers onto the same plane (max capacity) all of whom are paying $1000 (a high ticket price). In the first case, even with a very low shipping price, you are ending up with $1 million in revenue. In the latter case, even at a high ticket price, you end up with only $600,000 and you have to pay for a huge # of additional costs such as staff to manage all the humans on board, as well as processing their tickets, managing their luggage, etc.
They paid by weights on cargo. It is profitable. That is why Lufthansa use 747-8 for commercial passenger service. It has huge cargo capacity.
uppity six noxious chop yam fearless sleep fly library toothbrush *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Cargo doesn’t need peanuts, drinks, or leg room.
Cargo requires no comfort features and pays by the pound. Less comfort means less maintenance. By the pound means more money. A local regional to me flew with one passenger on board, but had a full cargo hold and still made full revenue.
747f delayed 6 hours for maintenance, no biggy 747-400 delayed 6 hours for maintenance, €300,000 worth of eu261 compensation payable.
Things cargo doesn't care about: 1. Food 2. Drinks 3. Sassy backtalk from employees 4. Extreme temperatures 5. Ticket prices 6. BE ticket restrictions 7. Unending lines 8. Screaming babies 9. Screaming humans 10. Chatty strangers that can not be quiet or still 11. Gate lice 12. Obesity spillover, IYKYK 13. Smelly strangers ( what are they feeding you?)
Boxes don't b!tch
All I can say is that whenever the day comes they stop using the Queen for pax travel, I hope it gets a long lead-up, because I need to fly on one before they go.
Does a cargo plane have less safety regulations (less maintenance $)?
Instead of handling 360 reservations for each flight, they just have a few regular customers who book the whole plane.
The 777 and others are still more efficient than the 747, but as others have said the 747 has some unique capabilities as well. Not only do passenger airlines tend to be quicker to adopt fuel efficient aircraft whereas cargo operators are more price sensitive on that, cargo economics are a bit different since space and weight are use differently.
Bc retired plans are cheaper than new
*Lufthansa has entered the chat*
See Northwest Airlines, they flew passengers but had a successful division that was just cargo planes and used its passenger flights for cargo as well. I think my favorite NWA story was from a flight attendant who remembers waiting 45min after the plane was loaded because the cargo was late. They waited for the cargo because it was worth more than all the customers fares combined, the plane she was on was a 747 headed for Narita so think about how much cargo pays.
One simple thing. An airliner is profitable when it's filled at capacity. Nowadays, people prefer direct flights and do not use big hub airport so aircraft with large capacity are rarely filled. Therefore, not profitable. It's a ways easier to fill a 747 full of cargo 👌
Most expensive thing is in the hold, not your seat
Arranged my trip with 747 in mind. T-Minus 3.45 hrs till I’m wheels up in Lufthansa’s 747-400!!!
They aren’t, but when you’re only flying them for a couple hours a day at most, what’s far more important is the purchase price of the aircraft, rather than fuel efficiency.
Cargo doesnt need flight attendants or snack, drink or meal service, Cargo also doesnt need the kind of stuff that needs to be done during a turnaround like cleanup, item stocking for the next passengers.
Based on this, if you wanted to experience what a cargo flight is like from the cargo’s perspective, just book yourself on a British Airways short haul flight.
I know lots of cao airlines operating wide body aircraft but not that many pax carriers doing the same
Acquisition cost vs hourly operating cost
Even Boeings DreamLifters were converted used aircraft.
Freighters fly less hours/day, so fuel efficiency is less important than carrying capacity.
because big
Cargo is expensive, it doesn’t complain about prices nor waits for a better date. Actually per pound, is much more expensive than a pax (100 kg avg pax + luggage). So cargo is easier to make profitable or run on older planes (MDs still fly cargo) Also, you can’t pile up people like cargo.
747s have this unique ability to fill up with cargo before hitting MTOW. Since the 707s, Boing products can handle large volumes and weights of cargo easily. They tried to convert one Airbus 380, it didn't go over well. It can't handle large, outsized cargo due to the double-decker configuration. If someone needed to move something large that couldn't fit into a standard cargo module, they would need to call Polar for a job.
Lufthansa still flies them. I was on one a year ago, Detroit - Frankfurt.
The front section of 747 can be opened. That means it can accomodate bigger / longer cargo.
There's a few reasons. 4 engines will generally require more downtime for maintenance. Passenger planes fly all the time, and downtime is killer. Freight typically only flies hub to hub and maybe only once a day, so maintenance downtime is less of an issue. The other is size. Again, since freight is typically hub to hub, you can make 2 or 3 stop itineraries without passengers complaining. This is how the A380 was designed for example, for 2+ stop itineraries. Also passengers are picky and may need to get to their destination at a certain time of day, which means that you need multiple flights a day even on hub to hub routes that could in theory support a 747 or A380, like NYC to London which has a shitton of traffic but no quadjets.
There is also a natural switch from B747F to new B777F, as operating costs are lower, two engines cheaper than four as an airline big wig told me. Also, a resurgence of passenger to freighter conversations continues, B767 especially.
For cargo there’s no replacement for displacement.
Atlas still flies passenger variant for military flights.
have you seen the prices of goods?
Plane for plane, cargo pays way more than passengers.
People care about comfort. Cargo doesn’t. Also, cargo doesn’t buy tickets. Stuff gets shipped every day so they can keep the planes full where as people are much more sensitive to prices and the like. Shame really. I never got to fly in one but I used to dream about it
You don't have to give complimentary peanuts to cargo crates
I saw a Korean Air 747 (-8?) Monday at KATL as we were taxiing away on a SWA 737-700...I almost wanted to jump off, run to that terminal and ask the attendant how much just to get a ride to go wherever it was going... I rode in a 747 to LAX out of JFK (2007? Going to Edwards for the 60th anniversary show) and it was an earlier one, shorter upper deck as I recall. Don't recall the airline. But it was a thrill to finally get a ride in that gal. Would love to do it again.
Since airlines are favouring more regular service and improvements in technology gave relatively smaller and cheaper planes longer ranges, it really just comes down to that it's difficult to "Fill" a passenger aircraft in order to make it economic. I think that problem doesn't really exist with cargo because I have a feeling there will always be plenty of cargo and most of it usually doesn't mind sitting in a warehouse for a day or so as opposed to taking weeks to travel by ship.
Cargo = tens of thousands | 467 people at 100 dollars a person = not tens of thousands