Originally Posted by Hedley

When the international quarantine restrictions come down and when demand comes back, the long haul passenger flights will will resume and the available cargo space will dramatically increase. This of course will drive bulk cargo rates back to their normal levels. I’d love to see something like Northwest had with their freight operation, but I suspect that the margins are too thin to go through the expense. We have a bunch of 767-300’s that would make excellent freighters, but there is no way that United pilots would accept the normal crew configuration, or that the company would spend the money to install the UPS crew rest pod (basically a ULD position converted into a bunk room). The normal freighter configuration used by everyone else has the lav moved into the cockpit, and your rest seat is the reclining jumpseat. Our pilots complain about a lie flat first class seat and a curtain, they wouldn’t accept the standard configuration. Bulk freight has definitely increased in volume, but intense competition and the ACMI whipsaw has made it a lower yielding business. Bezos would likely contract us to fly for Amazon, but he’d only pay Atlas rates. The freight conversions are also pretty expensive. There is a bunch of work cutting a big hole in a plane for a cargo door and beefing up the floor to handle the weight in turbulence. Most of my background prior to this place was various freight outfits. I’m always amazed about how little most passenger pilots know about the freight world. They see UPS and Fed Ex pilots making good money, but they don’t understand that those companies are just global shipping companies and that airplanes are just one of the tools that they use. The money is generated from the time of the order to the delivery of the package, not the time that the box went for an airplane ride. You seem to get it though.