Atlas and Passengers!?!?!
 

I saw an advert on Climbto350.

ATLAS AIR (Passenger Service Manager - Purchase, NY)

Is Atlas venturing into the passenger market? Boxes by night and passengers by day?

FedEx had this idea many years ago. They actually even ordered (and received) 737 combi's so they could convert them to pax hauling birds during the day (when they would otherwise have sat idle). They eventually decided (before the actual start of operations, I believe?) that there was no money in the pax business and that flying people during the day would hurt their night time reliability. In retrospect ... seems VERY insightful. :D (Reference for the above: Prof. Sigafoos's book, link below)

Amazon.com: Absolutely Positively Overnight: The Unofficial Corporate History of Federal Express (9780918518682): Robert Alan Sigafoos: Books

Also ... didn't UPS try the passenger business "thing" for a short while? :eek:

Atlas got an oil service contract and will be flying some folks from Texas around the globe. Add the dreamlifter contract and you can see they are expanding at the moment. Had a few calls from folks interested in prepping for some upcoming interviews. No SA on numbers...but they are a bright spot in a tough industry right now.

Aloha pulled their 737 seats at night and flew inter-island freight for years if I recall correctly.

We're actually doing our proving runs now, our first pax aircraft is flying at this moment from LAD to IAH (15 hours), and we operated from JFK to LAD yesterday, service is to begin the first week of May, between IAH and LAD 3 times weekly.

One of the UPS guys will have to chime in with more info, but they did run 727's down to the Caribbean from 1997-2001.

Here is an article, the pax stuff is about a quarter of the way down:

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-ar...ead.main?id=66

[QUOTE=MaydayMark

Also ... didn't UPS try the passenger business "thing" for a short while? :eek:[/QUOTE]

Yep, we did. We had some 72s that flew charter work for some travel agencies, cruise lines, sports teams, etc. The operation lasted maybe 4 or 5 years before they pulled the plug on it.

I don't think they'll be hauling boxes with this one..


JetPhotos.Net Photo » N263SG (CN: 29263) Atlas Air Boeing 747-481 by Thomas Kwan

Pardon the SJS but that is a nice lookin machine. Cool pic.

It's called HJS, Heavy Jet Syndrome.