Originally Posted by
N707ZS
Could it be due to the end of activity in Afghanistan. We had a flow of MAC and commercial jets supplying the activities flying over the UK airspace which now seems to have decreased in number.
That's an interesting point. But it seems like WGN was doing a lot of Asia-US work, for which the demand seems to continue. One carrier said the other day he would buy another 10 converted 747s out of retirement if they were still there, but zero are available. There are numerous companies running maybe 25 large, long-range passenger aircraft (A340, 747-400), stripped of seats on the main deck but with no cargo door, so no containers and hand-loading, and they're busy. Brokers will pay well over $1 million for cargo runs to/from Vietnam right now. FedEx and UPS are running basically every MD11 they own, having pulled the flyable ones from the desert.
So the demand for 12 full-freighter aircraft with the capability of the MD11 is there. This would seem to be a golden period for WGN to exploit. So it just feels odd...