Originally Posted by
C2078
UPS had been posting $1B+ quarterly profits (pre Covid, now off the charts) very consistently, with steady 5% yearly revenue gains. Kalitta has done fairly well since it’s rebirth, Atlas doing pretty good, as is Fedex.
Now, if you mean no money in cargo for passenger carriers, who’s primary revenue comes from pax? I cannot comment as I have no idea of pax airline economics.
UPS is a global shipping company that uses aircraft simply to feed the trucks delivering the freight to the customers and is a completely different model than what we could do. Amazon started an impressive shipping company, however their model is to farm the flying out to the lowest bidder. Prime Air is basically the global freight version of the regionals. If we were to try to fly dedicated freighters and go up against Kalitta or Atlas, they would crush us on cost and more flexible work rules. What United does very well is to maximize cargo revenue on existing flights to increase revenue dollars per trip. When the freight prices soared during COVID making freight only trips possible, we were also very quick to capture a large part of that market as well. As supply returns to the market and prices drop, flying freight only trips won’t work for us, and we will move back to the way things were before. I sure wish that it would work. I’d love to bid 777 freighters and never fly a passenger again.