A330-300P2F Interest

[Da Do Ron Ron]

Airbus are reporting interest in a P2F conversion for the A330-300 series quoting a payload of 50-60 ton which would be an ideal aircraft for intra- Europe cargo flights.

DHL or TNT spring to mind as their A300F's are getting a bit long in the tooth.

AA09: Airbus sees 'serious interest' in A330-300 freighter conversion (http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/09/08/331979/aa09-airbus-sees-serious-interest-in-a330-300-freighter.html)

[dusk2dawn]

How much is the normal deck slope on a -300?

[MrIkea]

An A330 will be too expensive to operate on short haul sectors imho...

Average flight time of an "express freight" cargo aircraft in europe is what, around 4 or 5 hours ?

A bit a waste of money letting it sit on the ground for 3/4th of the day.

Plus indeed the slope comes to mind as being (although a fixable) problem.

The payload is also too much , the only thing which comes to mind being useful is the volume you can ship...

They should start on those conversions of the Luftie A300's... when this crisis is over in 10 years or so they can use them ;-)

[act700]

..in 10 years will be in the midst, or just out of the next crisis!

[CargoOne]

Average flight time of an "express freight" cargo aircraft in europe is what, around 4 or 5 hours ?

Try 1:30 to 1:45 for jet

[MrIkea]

That's a bit too low... at DHL anyway...

[CargoOne]

The longest intra European routes like HEL, ATH, LIS are up to 3 hrs. Shortest are just below 1 hour. I don't want to spend a time to calculate the average for all routes, but 1:30 to 1:45 is pretty much right guess I believe.

[Whitehatter]

Airbus are saying that the P2F conversion on the A330-300 would include the nose blister modification.

Target punters would presumably include the likes of UPS and FedEx as it's volume rather than density the longer aircraft would provide. There are also a lot of other potential candidates out there, smaller operators around the globe who need something without the factory-fresh cost. China is another possible, as are the Asian nations as a whole, who could use their own aircraft as feedstock.

[MrIkea]

@ CargoOne

But then again, a lot of short routes are "4 sector" routes.
For example, lej-ema-dub and back...

If it would be one major hub , with point to point I agree with the hours you state.
But with a lot of sub-hubs the picture changes a bit...

[CargoOne]

MrIkea

I was talking about short cycles as such (ie per sector), not a daily utilization.
Sure many aircraft doing 4 sectors a day and full rotation could be anything between 2 and 8 block hours in Europe which is by far lower than what A330 is designed for.
Anyway early production A330-300 in 2012 will be the same age as A300B4 was when conversions were started, so I guess we will see it soon.

[Skystar02]

Cargoone,

you're right about high cycles on the A330 with only 8 hours per day. However the A300B4 was not design for long haul flights like A330 but for high density routes. So in the end it's a very different airplane and I don't think is the right plane to fly european routes like A300B4 have been doing in TNT, but long haul routes.

Regards!

[Whoosh1999]

The A330 is flown very successfully and profitably out here in the Far East on shorthaul sectors. Our shortest sector is only 50 minutes and the jet does the job very economically. I'm surprised its taken so long to realise the cargo potential of the A330. We frequently carry 25T in the belly with a full load of pax. :ok:

Whoosh

[boingdrvr]

I think the delay by operators in accepting the airframe as a freighter is two fold.

1) waiting for the residual values to come down to a realistic point for P2F conversions.

2) Operators accepting Airbus's plan to lengthen the nose gear mounts so when the A/C top side was being loaded, the deck angle was reasonable enough to do so by hand.
While this fix allowed Airbus to keep nose gear assemblies common through out the fleet, I believe performance is going to suffer from the "nose gear blister" gear doors.

[oceancrosser]

It will probably be awhile before the residual values of the A330-300 allow conversion to freighter. Older A340s (2-300s) which are generating little interest in the passenger market will probable precede that one. It will be more expensive to operate, but the drop in cost of acquisition might offset that.