fanaticalflyer

Come on snowflake. Have a drink and relax.

BoldPilot

Who says I haven’t had a drink? Maybe you should catch up snowflake.

Sniper66

I can only hope

25 cargo planes will be awesome
that’s 700 jobs

Hedley

The problem with freight is that we’d be competing with Atlas and Kalitta, not Fed Ex or UPS. Freight prices now are artificially high due to reduced volume from the normal long haul airlines carrying freight. Our revenue from flying freighters would be in line with the ACMI companies, and they would kill us on cost. Purple and brown are completely different operations. They are global shipping companies that just use airplanes to fill their own trucks and make deliveries. We can’t compete with that. I wish that it would work though. Flying freight is better than dealing with flight attendants or passengers in every way.

biggun

I've had a talk with the VP of cargo operations. He comes from KLM. He gets it.

For UAL, freight/cargo is simply "value added" to the end product. Think of it like this: when you go through the check out line at the grocery store, you got some extra room in your cart for some soda pop, gum, and candy. You pick it up.

Same goes for Cargo for us. Let's simply pick up the revenue and count that as value added. So, do we go head to head and compete with Fed Ex and UPS, Atlas, etc.? or do we simply spot the money, bend down and pick it up.

Could we add some cargo only airplanes? Yes. it fits within our ops specs. I recall Continental having a very successful freight operation out of Manila.

I would be curious to know what Kirby's and Jar's plans are on freight/cargo. More value added, or go after the revenue? There are some aspects of our operation that lend itself well to hauling the freight. The more diversified our operation is, the more we may be immune to retractions and contractions in other parts of international commerce. If domestic is sucking, we need more international. If international is sucking we need more domestic. If passenger revenue is down, we need more freight.

Perhaps we take in 20 percent of our revenue from freight? That gives us some degree of immunity from fuel price increases and may protect our RASM's and PRASM's during low periods such as Sept/Oct, and Jan/Feb. time frames.

Winston

His name is Jan Krems, and more than any executive at this airline, he should be recognized as the right man at the right time during this ****-show. His foresight definitely put my family in a better financial position to weather this storm:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance...134222611.html


https://www.unitedcargo.com/company/...ype1=PressRoom

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.

Airhoss

I’m not sure why you’d be surprised about how few PAX pilots don’t know about freight flying. Most haven’t done it. Some of us have.

The last time UAL tried to jump into freight it was an unsupported and unmitigated nightmare. If we are going to do it we’ve got to spend the infrastructure bucks. You can’t go in half way.

Hedley

It’s not really that they don’t know about freight, it is that they think that they do. It’s a completely different game. I completely agree about the infrastructure. The freight competition is just as fierce as passenger flying, and if you don’t do it right, the competition will eat you alive. I sure wish that it would work though. Commuting to my base on my own airline and then taking a 777 freighter to NRT would be the dream. Flying in pajamas, no flight attendants, no passengers, no phone call to go to the lav, fix a meal when you want, long flights with long breaks.......once I could hold that, I’d never bid off.

WhisperJet

Never been a hug fan of SK in terms of labor relations, but from a business/operations perspective, I have to say I think he is the right man to get UAL through this crisis.