I’ll give you credit in that you are probably unaware of the 20+ year old joke about UAL and cargo.

RTFT

 

In 2020, United Airlines cargo revenue increased by $500M year over year, from 1.1B to 1.6B.
In 2020, United Airlines passenger revenue decreased by almost $28B year over year, from 39.6B to 11.8B

So the 2020 increase in cargo revenue was able to make up 1.8% of the revenue deficit from passengers. WOW. We should definitely get into the cargo bidness.

 

It is perspective...there is a happy medium🤷🏼‍♂️. Cargo vs Pax is just like politics, too many extremes. There is benefits in cargo, while doing passenger...anyone who says different...too extreme on either end. Now, wear a mask...or don’t...I don’t care, I want United profitable.

 

Freight dog here. I don't know this joke. Care to explain? Or at least point me to where I can RTFT?

 

It has been said a few times over the years by different UAL CEO's. I think the first was Dick Ferris, shortly after the strike in '85. UAL had several convertible cargo 737's. A fairly large fleet of DC-8 cargo planes.

They sold the freighters, and Ferris said, "There's no money in cargo."

Then UAL sold almost our entire fleet of 727's to FedEx, at the time, Greenwald(??) was in charge. The question was asked, why aren't we keeping the planes and doing this ourselves, and the answer was, "There is no money in cargo."

Next was the DC-10 freighter operation based in ANC. UAL was looking at buying more 777's to replace the DC-10's. Several were converted to cargo, on the cheap--which didn't work very well. We flew the freighter operation out of ANC for a while, the planes broke often, and wasn't reliable. They didn't adequately maintain the planes. UAL, again, chose to do this on the cheap and it bit them in the ass, thus proving that...."There is no money in Cargo." Instead of converting more of the DC-10's to cargo, and the MD-10 program, UAL, again, sold most of the fleet to FED-EX.

Fast forward to about 6 years ago. UAL sold a bunch of 757's to, you guessed it, FedEx. When Tilton was asked about cargo, then Smizek, they both said,...…"There is no money in cargo."

Thus,long history, snarky old joke.....And.....there is still no money in 777 cargo!!

 

Ha. Thanks.

I know very little about UAL ops to be honest. But man, I always thought pound for pound, boxes pay more than pax and don't need lounges and stuff.

Plus, you can stack boxes to the ceiling unlike pax. Anyway, what do I know? I just drive where they tell me.

 

The difference is that you have people who can deliver them to every home in the lower 48 and most countries ($$$value$$$) We can only drop the boxes off at the airport. There are about ~200 121 cargo ops who can get from LAX to wherever without crashing, so the revenue from pure freight ops isn't too good.. Just my understanding of it.

 

boxes also don’t care where they connect and typically only go one way. That makes it a lot more competitive and depresses yields.

UAL is geared to fly point to point with the 787 and caters to premium cabin stuff. Not exactly suited for cargo in the long term. Could one build a cargo operation? Maybe but every & you spend on that cannot be spent on other stuff

 

Not disagreeing but just adding, returns are a huge revenue (and yield) gain for a month after Christmas. So a few (million) boxes do go round trip.

 

Sounds cargo flights are starting up again due to traffic decline.

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/un...ly-flights/amp