<story><title>Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-02/boeing-quietly-pulls-plug-on-the-747-closing-era-of-jumbo-jets</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gsnedders</author><text>A _large_ proportion of worldwide freight is ordinarily carried in the belly of passenger aircraft. When most airlines stopped flying, the price of air freight _quickly_ rose (as the capacity pretty much fell overnight to just the dedicated freighter aircraft). This meant it became profitable (i.e., above the marginal costs of the flights) to fly passenger aircraft purely for the belly-hold freight.&lt;p&gt;They certainly aren&amp;#x27;t doing this and making a loss: they&amp;#x27;re hemorrhaging enough money already that they wouldn&amp;#x27;t want to add to that, but when the marginal cost is essentially the landing fees minus the parking fees they&amp;#x27;d otherwise be paying, plus the additional cost of paying the crew above and beyond any furlough payment, plus the cost of fuel, plus any marginal maintenance cost from the extra cycles.</text></item><item><author>nelaboras</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d love to see some numbers on this. As far as I understand they are used for freight because it&amp;#x27;s better than to let them sit empty (and pilots and ground staff have to be paid too), but it still is not profitable.</text></item><item><author>x43b</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;The Covid-19 pandemic threatens to leave their manufacturers scrounging to find buyers for the last jumbos built.&lt;p&gt;This is imply not true.  The last 747s built are freighters.  Freight demand is at an all time high due to COVID and constraints on supply chians. Even passenger vehicles are being called into freight service (which is far less efficient yet still economical).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>perspectivezoom</author><text>I just watched a video about this, that basically goes over all your points:
&amp;quot;Air Cargo&amp;#x27;s Coronavirus Problem&amp;quot; by Wendover Productions
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=r2oPk20OHBE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=r2oPk20OHBE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;A summary of the video:&lt;p&gt;- Passenger flight belly cargo used to be responsible for 25% of air cargo capacity, so capacity is severely reduced.&lt;p&gt;- PPE emergency logistics has caused a huge spike in demand, since PPE allocations are currently too volatile for anything except for air cargo. Air cargo prices are high.&lt;p&gt;- Government funding for airlines require pilots to remain on salary, so there&amp;#x27;s no additional marginal cost of labor.&lt;p&gt;- The biggest marginal cost of a flight, the cost of fuel, has understandably also become very cheap.&lt;p&gt;The end result is that even though it&amp;#x27;s still quite inefficient as compared to dedicated freight planes, the perfect storm of circumstances makes passenger-planes-as-cargo-planes momentarily profitable.</text></comment>
<story><title>Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-02/boeing-quietly-pulls-plug-on-the-747-closing-era-of-jumbo-jets</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gsnedders</author><text>A _large_ proportion of worldwide freight is ordinarily carried in the belly of passenger aircraft. When most airlines stopped flying, the price of air freight _quickly_ rose (as the capacity pretty much fell overnight to just the dedicated freighter aircraft). This meant it became profitable (i.e., above the marginal costs of the flights) to fly passenger aircraft purely for the belly-hold freight.&lt;p&gt;They certainly aren&amp;#x27;t doing this and making a loss: they&amp;#x27;re hemorrhaging enough money already that they wouldn&amp;#x27;t want to add to that, but when the marginal cost is essentially the landing fees minus the parking fees they&amp;#x27;d otherwise be paying, plus the additional cost of paying the crew above and beyond any furlough payment, plus the cost of fuel, plus any marginal maintenance cost from the extra cycles.</text></item><item><author>nelaboras</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d love to see some numbers on this. As far as I understand they are used for freight because it&amp;#x27;s better than to let them sit empty (and pilots and ground staff have to be paid too), but it still is not profitable.</text></item><item><author>x43b</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;The Covid-19 pandemic threatens to leave their manufacturers scrounging to find buyers for the last jumbos built.&lt;p&gt;This is imply not true.  The last 747s built are freighters.  Freight demand is at an all time high due to COVID and constraints on supply chians. Even passenger vehicles are being called into freight service (which is far less efficient yet still economical).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mlyle</author><text>Not to mention that when we&amp;#x27;re talking about freighters, e.g. 747-8F-- they are not limited to belly hold freight.  (And have much less cabin weight, fly slower &amp;#x2F; use less fuel, so the weight they can carry is better than repurposed passenger aircraft).</text></comment>