Five 747-400F sold and four 744 Combis on market

[Widebodyand4holes]

1) China Airlines recently sold five 744Fs to unnamed freight operators. Any word who bought?
2) There are four 744 Combis on the market. Are the 744 Combis attractive at all without full conversion to freighter? Seems that Bedek Aviation too busy to do 747 Conversions now.

[OmegaTriple]

The combis are worthless as you need to carry 20T ‘ballast fuel’ in the centre tank to keep the CG within limits.
The cost to carry that extra fuel just for CG purposes makes the combi unviable

[Widebodyand4holes]

Why would seasoned 747 operator,, Air Atlanta Icelandic, have bought (leased from Jetonex) a VIP Combi 744 from Dubai Air Wing in early 2022? Are they intending to hire out expensive charters in what is a pretty nicely decked out aircraft with less than 100 PAX seats? Or did they think they could get the airplane converted to full F configuration by Israel Aerospace.

[Proline21]

Why would seasoned 747 operator,, Air Atlanta Icelandic, have bought (leased from Jetonex) a VIP Combi 744 from Dubai Air Wing in early 2022? Are they intending to hire out expensive charters in what is a pretty nicely decked out aircraft with less than 100 PAX seats? Or did they think they could get the airplane converted to full F configuration by Israel Aerospace.

I suspect the aircraft was very well maintained and might have been purchased for spare parts only

[Self loading bear]

I think a combi to Freighter conversion is 1/2 the cost of a P2F conversion.
IAI is willing to sell out their STCs so conversion can be done at every licensed maintenance/repair station (perhaps in house?)
Cargo door is already there
Floor strengthening is half done
Remainder Floor strengthening is (I think) the big chunk
lining, lighting etc half done
Fire extinguishing system to be enlarged.
One could choose not to remove aft part of upperdeck.

By the way, In Iran they did their own conversion B747-300M to F but that is now grounded in Argentina.

[Self loading bear]

As long as there are 747-400F in storage, I don’t think there will be any conversions. At the moment we see re-activation of an A300-400F which has been in storage for 8 years.

But if any it will be the Combis first.

[Widebodyand4holes]

https://www.aircargonews.net/monthly-exclusive/air-atlanta-opens-new-chapter-with-move-to-777s/

This suggests that AAI is still committed to 747 fleet longer term subject to market needs. Plus moving to 777s is a wise hedge.

[tdracer]

I think you'll find as freight demand picks up, pretty much any relatively low time 747-400 will be in demand for freighter conversion. Since the 747 is officially out of production, it's not like you can ask Boeing for one, and most passenger 747-400s were very well used before being retired (100,000 hours not being uncommon) - even if it was Covid that pushed them into retirement.
Boeing built few passenger 747-400s after year 2000, so when Covid came around in 2020, most of the passenger 747-400s were already pretty long in the tooth.

[Widebodyand4holes]

I hear that Israeli Aerospace is too busy converting two engine wide body AC and has no space or time to do 747-400s anymore. Is there anyone out there left that can do 747 conversions. Especially if the freight market resurges?

[tdracer]

I hear that Israeli Aerospace is too busy converting two engine wide body AC and has no space or time to do 747-400s anymore. Is there anyone out there left that can do 747 conversions. Especially if the freight market resurges?
Last I heard, Boeing still did "BCF" (Boeing Converted Freighters). I suspect they charged more to doit than Israeli Aerospace, but if they are the only game in town...
I've not heard if Boeing (or anyone else) has plans for a 747-8 freighter conversion. I know that the people who operate the 747-8F are very satisfied with both the payload and fuelburn - it's reasonable to expect that most of that would carry over to a 747-8 freighter conversion.

[Widebodyand4holes]

Wow BCFs still being done? That would be great.

[tdracer]

Wow BCFs still being done? That would be great.
I don't think they've done any for a while, but (to the best of my knowledge) they still offer BCFs.