Passenger airlines start shifting idled planes into freight business | Hacker News Reader

Passenger airlines start shifting idled planes into freight business

wsj.com

336 pointsJumpCrisscross168 comments

I have some visibility to the logistics industry.

It's a strange and old fashioned industry, but also fairly flexible.

This seems more like a move for the airlines than a serious need outside of a few lanes. Generally speaking there isn't a lack of logistics capacity right now from what I've seen. Airlines have been in the logistics game for ages anyway. The amount they participate / effort ebs and flows at times, but they've always been there.

>Generally speaking there isn't a lack of logistics capacity right now

How sure are you about that? In my large Texas city, grocery stores have been packed all day every day for like 2 weeks. How long can out country operate at such capacity before supply shortages start? Stores are already unable to keep shelves stocked.,.

How long can our country continue to purchase at the current rate before everyone has built a stockpile?

What percentage of meals were previously consumed outside the home, at workplaces, schools and daycares? Add all of those to the baseline grocery shopping rates pre-coronavirus, add on some anxiety factor, and you'll have the new baseline.

Similar for toilet paper in stores. Previously you spent 8-12 hours at work using your company's supply, now you have to use and buy your own. The in-home usage per day has pretty much doubled and shifted to retail.

>The base in-home usage per day has pretty much doubled.

And the base work, day care, and restaurant usage has plummeted. That's the thing about logistics and supply, a person can only use so much toilet paper for example. Once you've delivered 4 or 5 times the supply necessary for the population of a city, you're wasting effort. There is a distribution problem in that supply node, not really a logistics problem with the system.

We have distribution inefficiencies in many of our "supply nodes", no question. But these are not inefficiencies that airlines, or even traditional freight companies, can solve.

And the toilet paper that was in work is getting used how?

The point is that it's a different flow of resources, e.g. retail distribution vs commercial property management supply.

The work toilet paper is more likely to be 1-ply recycled toilet paper in large rolls than what people would buy for a home. The factories that produce commercial TP may not be able to convert to the preferred residential products quickly.

If grocery stores run out of 2-ply but still offer 1-ply, people will buy 1-ply for home.

All they have to do is make smaller rolls and people will still buy it if there's a shortage, regardless of ply.

It is probably the same factory making it.

For example, Andrex (apparently Cottonelle in the USA) is owned by Kimberly Clark, which also sells commercial products.

Who uses industrial/commercial toilet paper in their homes? The factories can stop creating more but the existing supply is locked in large rolls most people don't use in their homes. Even not in large rolls it's not as nice as most toilet paper people use in their houses.

Put it on the shelves anyway. Most people aren’t going to be picky when the option is that or your hand.

there's always the poop sponge!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylospongium

I do. Rolls last longer. The paper doesn't shred so readily. You need more sheets, but less total mass. You can wipe mirrors and sinks without leaving paper residue behind.

Restaurants buy their food also. There should be some decrease in restaurant supplies, although I suspect the prepared food has much more water content.

I did think about this. There probably is some adjustment that needs to happen with the supply chains, but to some degree it's just changing the endpoints a little bit.

> Similar for toilet paper in stores. Previously you spent 8-12 hours at work using your company's supply,

You've missed one possible mitigating factor. Many people save their more... erm... resource-demanding toilet activities for home. ;-)

The old saying goes "Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I shit on company time."

I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say here. Are you saying that many people only poop at home?

Hilarious, but I've known numerous people who will only use the company bathrooms as a last resort.

Ever notice how many animals poop wherever and whenever they need? Humans are one of the few species with a socially mediated pooping reflex--that is, the urge to defecate is attenuated when around other people. This attenuation is stronger for some people than others. At the extreme end of the spectrum, some are very nearly physically incapable of defecating in the presence of other people.

Does your office not have bathrooms to allow people to poop in privacy?

Define privacy. American-style stalls don't permit very much privacy, though in any event "private" is in the mind of the person. That's what makes it interesting--a person's feeling of privacy mediates a very basic physiological function.

Wow! Talk about an open office! But as anecdata my wife avoids pooping at work or at public toilets, so saves it up for home, whereas I will just go if I need to and there is a non-disgusting toilet available.

Dogs seem to be super picky about where exactly they’ll poop. Ours when he has to go will only go in the nearby park (not on the sidewalk or the street on the way there). And then he sniffs around for five minutes or so before finding the perfect spot. I think his social cues are largely about smell.

It's surely a cultural one, yes? Eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_in_ancient_Rome#Pub... :

> Public latrines date back to the 2nd century BC. Whether intentionally or not, they became places to socialise. Long bench-like seats with keyhole-shaped openings cut in rows offered little privacy.

Or from https://ask.metafilter.com/235727/Have-humans-always-sought-... :

> When I lived in China, I had the experience of using many, many public restrooms which were basically just a big concrete trench in a room. Occasionally there would be small dividers but not always. So practically speaking, pooping would sometimes be quite the communal activity.

Yes, on the whole it's cultural as culture informs us as to what is public or private. And no doubt individual behaviors can change, though the degree to which they can readily change for any particular adult is the sticking point. Culture isn't the only dimension--the strength of the physiological response (which is rooted in genetics) undoubtedly varies. For all we know, maybe 10% of Romans were secretly midnight poopers and perplexed at how people could chat while doing their business. Such covert behavior would naturally go unnoticed by others.

It's easier to point to young children as an example. The second link, for example, includes:

> I have a child who could not poo if someone was in the room or he was being watched, so a soon as he could move for privacy, he did. ... Many other kids will at least need to avert their eyes and at least pretend they have some semblance of privacy. Others will let go while grinning at you.

FWIW, my 3-year-old son loves to watch me poop, and will run into the bathroom when I need to go. And I let him, and don't find it difficult to poop.

I do have a hard time getting a sense for how much is "rooted in genetics" beyond the simple fact that we are living creatures.

Some people are scared of flying. Others are not. This cannot be a direct result of genetic selection, for obvious reasons.

Some children love certain foods, while a sibling does not. This too cannot be explained by simple genetics.

So given examples like the Romans, and Chinese and (again from the second link) "About a billion people -- 15% of the world's population -- practise open defecation" and "In the Samoan house there are no walls... the beaches are used openly as latrines." - how meaningful is it to say it's 'rooted in genetics', any more than we can say that at some level English is rooted in genetics?

I used to live 5 min from school.In 12 years, I never,even once, went for a big one there,because the toilets were disgusting.

If we're talking hypotheticals without any data, there is an opposing possibility. Some people poop at work on purpose- I prefer to get paid while pooping instead of losing leisure time. I suppose it depends on how clean your work bathrooms are or your fear of public bathrooms. I know I'm not the only one pooping at work, I regularly see occupied stalls.

Apropos: https://youtu.be/137Ei0C3Vdg?t=100

Some of us do the opposite :P

Restaurants are still open.

In some states, yes, but not for much longer.

In which states will they not be? They’re considered essential even in shelter in place states

California has one of the stricter shelter-in-place orders and everything connected to food supply, including prepared food, is essential. Restaurants are delivery/takeout only, but still operating.

Now, it's probably true that on average the share of food consumed from restaurants has dropped, but the sector isn't closed down.

I'd imagine though that people are still eating roughly the same amount of food, so if restaurant sales have dropped then grocery store sales must have gone up (which I guess they did given the hoarding).

We're already testing the waters on how much the public will tolerate. We have to keep the supply lines running or people will stop complying.

I'm not sure anyone is tracking this in an accessible way, but school meals almost everywhere are likely still available. Schools have large minimum orders sizes and federal/state funding is tied around providing food, so they're highly incentivized to figure out how to distribute it in order to get the cashflow to pay off those contractual obligations.

In my city, those meals are currently available for curbside pickup for students.

> now you have to use and buy your own.

Yeah, but the office was buying it at Costco too, and now they aren't. The total demand for TP hasn't increased, it's just shifted. Once everyone has a stockpile at home, they won't buy it anymore.

Same with food. The restaurants were buying it and now consumers are instead. The demand is shifting but the level is the same.

Don't consumers have more food waste than restaurants? I believe I read something about that a while ago.

You're right for TP though. Imho that was simply a reaction to people understanding "you might have to be quarantined at home" as "you can't go out or get things delivered during that time, ever", and preparing adequately. Once they have their stash and/or realize that quarantined doesn't mean post-apocalyptic head-for-the-bunker, they'll relax and return to normal rates. It's important to quickly stock the shelves though, empty shelves make people nervous, and they'll overreact when they're nervous, buying more than they need ("the government and companies can't handle this situation, better stock up") and thus increase the problem.

Any future movies that take place in an apocalypse and don’t reference toilet paper are going to have real fidelity issues.

There was also a "everyone else is stripping the shelves bare, I better get some" reaction. I've tried to avoid buying more than I think I genuinely need, but my idea of what I genuinely need definitively shifted when I saw I could not easily get relative essentials near me because other people were buying as much as they could possibly get.

I've stuck with a relatively conservative 2-3 week supply of noodles and rice, and the kind of toilet paper supply I'd normally buy anyway but where I'd previously be ok with waiting until I had a couple of rolls left before reordering. But that is mentally more effort than just panic-buying - I'm ok with 2-3 weeks because I've kept a close eye on supplies and know I can still top up, but if I'd just panic bought everything I could get my hands on I wouldn't have needed to put the effort into keeping track.

And even millions of people trying to be similarly restrained but accounting for the reality that others aren't still has a massive negative effect.

Overall I agree with you that it needs to bottom out soon, though. And I also very much agree about the psychological effect of keeping shelves look stocked.

Well,if people would only be buying to consume it.Ebay has pages and pages of listing of toilet paper now. How I hope we'll beat the virus sooner than all those bastards trying to sell it.

I think a lot of people were also building a "if I'm sick for a month" stash. But yeah, once past that things return to normal.

There seem to be articles saying that COVID-19 sometimes manifests with digestive symptoms first, and those symptoms are usually (85%) diarrhea.

> Yeah, but the office was buying it at Costco too, and now they aren't.

office depot delivers TP with the copier paper and kleenex. IME that's been more common than costco for any business large enough to have an office manager.

So office depot can sell it to the public, or the shipments can be redirected to costco. It's a pretty minor adjustment either way.

This.

Logistics has a built in circuit breaker. Whether you're talking about military use cases or civilian use cases. At some point, you will just have too much on the ground. No more will fit. At that point, it's a question of distributing the oversupply of what's already there in a fashion appropriate to the purpose of the day.

The average person needs 7 gallons of water, 28 cans of meat, and 14 cans of fruit per 2 weeks. For a month long stockpile that comes out to 21 gallons of water, 84 cans of protein, and 42 cans of fruit. However everyone is probably stocking up on bananas and potatoes and fresh meats which will start to go bad after a week.

Water comes from the tap? It’s not the end of the world, dude; it’s just a high-anxiety staycation.

"Cans of meat"? I don't think I ever buy meat in cans...

Tuna and chicken are pretty common in cans. Spam is another example.

In any case I bought a couple weeks worth over a month ago when I saw what was coming.

That measurement is pretty bad anyways.

Maybe they'll provide better units we can actually discuss on.

Two cans of meat per day? Is this a diet that has no starch in it, or something?

> However everyone is probably stocking up on bananas and potatoes and fresh meats which will start to go bad after a week.

I doubt people are overbuying bananas too much, but more importantly meat can go in the freezer and something is wrong with your potatoes.

Those people are eating the same amount of food one way or another, it's just being purchased by individuals now instead of local businesses.

Outside of some specific items I'm seeing grocery stores well stocked and quickly restocking (my visibility is not perfect here).

The real concern would be if the outbreak were to suddenly sideline huge amounts of truck drivers / pilots / etc.

But many 'non essential' or 'seeing less demand' warehouses are shutting down / not busy, and that frees up a lot to focus on other things. Also truck drivers are now allowed to exceed their usual maximum driving hours ... and they are moving fast traffic wise.

As far as truck drivers and etc I'm seeing warehouses isolate drivers where previously the driver was not isolated. They're providing them an isolated room and etc to limit contact between delivery point personnel or warehouses.

Logistics in the US is strange, surprisingly low tech sometimes, but also very flexible industry. Outside still fairly flexible as well.

>The real concern would be if the outbreak were to suddenly sideline huge amounts of truck drivers / pilots / etc

I'm counting on some disruption. Even during isolation these people are basically walking infection vectors because of the nature of their jobs - loading/unloading (touching and breathing on) goods carried across the country. And I doubt we currently have the PPE for them...

I feel like that seems somewhat likely but like most things I'm not at all sure how much we will see it.

Grocery stores are satisfied almost entirely by domestic freight carriers (this could be said to be one of the definitions of a grocery store); in non-expedited domestic shipping, rail+truck are far-and-away the lowest-overhead carriers, with air not even entering the picture. Air (and sea) are for international and/or expedited freight, neither of which matter to shipping cabbages or cereal.

If grocery stores sell faster, and so requested more resupply, you'd just see more 18-wheelers on the road and more freight-trains passing through. Neither "infrastructure" of which is operated anywhere near its capacity.

I mean...there's a limit somewhere, isn't there? I'm not expecting grocery store supply chains to maintain 2x raw supplies reserved and manufacturing capacity...at the very least with the economy in the tank some of these factories that feed stores are going to shut down...

And as for farmed foods you can't just flip a switch when everyone is panic buying. Unless you mean to say we throw away half of the harvest under normal conditions.

Having the economy in the tank doesn’t shut down factories directly, it does it indirectly, e.g. by drying up demand. Demand for groceries is up. Food demand is relatively inelastic. What changes is which food has demand.

The supply chain for food is complicated, to say the least, but one of the things about food is that we’ve been working on extending shelf life for the past hundred years, and transport food globally, and it really shows. You can buy apples at the supermarket right now, even though they went out of season in October. If you had to think for a moment about when “in season” is for apples, well, the reason why you had to pause and think is because the modern supply chain gives you apples year round. The only way it can do that is by having a massive stockpile of shelf-stable apples which are sourced from both hemispheres.

As a matter of details, people aren’t really eating more or less, we’re just getting different foods through different channels, and the long & complicated supply chain takes a while to switch over. I just want to emphasize again that the supply chain is a real beast. Because of the nature of the beast, it has to have excess capacity, because it is just so damn inefficient.

> And as for farmed foods you can't just flip a switch when everyone is panic buying.

There’s enough slack in the supply chain to absorb panic buying, if you wait it out. Anecdotally, panic buying is drying up in NYC and we’re getting closer to steady state.

Totally an anecdote, but grocery stores in Austin, TX are much better stocked than they were a week ago.

There's only so much over-buying the average household can do before the pantry is totally full. Give it another week or two and things will be much better.

That would be a funny way to define grocery store, because it would exclude e.g. a number of stores in Alaska.

I feel like that’s intuitively correct, though.

A “grocery store” that you’d just call that is defined by a partnership with one or a number of domestic distributors.

There’s a different type of store (without a coherent name—it’s usually either “[country] import store” or “[culture] food market”) which is defined by a partnership with a specific import business (where that importer is in turn defined by their relationship to an export business in a specific country—though they may be re-exporting goods that were already imported there from elsewhere!) The supply chain for these companies is constrained by the logistics of international shipping, which means it’s more profitable to just specialize in one particular 1:1:1 logistical pipeline, rather than many.

The remote Alaskan grocery stores are really the latter type of store. They’re US import stores! (And a real “grocery store” in such a part of the would would just sell, like, seal meat. And maybe hydroponic hot-house vegetables, if they ever bother doing that.)

Italy still has well-stocked shelves from what I've heard. I am not too worried about it once the panic buying subsides.

Trucking capacity is definitely being stretched to its limit, but I don't know about Air.

FWIW I was quoted $500 CAD to ship a hydraulic massage table from Vancouver to Toronto with WestJet Cargo a month ago (two packages: 30kg, 104×63×24cm; 27kg, 79×100×29cm)~. My sister brought the table the other way with the cheapest land-based courier she could find, I believe it was a trucking company, and paid ~$700 CAD.

By air it was easy to arrange, it's there a day later, and can wait in their warehouse for up to three days free of charge. By land, it took a week and was difficult to arrange.

We used to ship things by air to the caribbean via american airlines all the time. I have fond memories of a child going to EWR cargo docks and dropping off a 55lb drum to send to the islands.

Thanks for bringing back that memory! I had to ship a 55gal drum of my belongings to Dominica years ago. Almost forgot about that.

Drums as containers makes perfect sense for smaller items yet I'd never heard of this form of transport for personal belongings. Thanks for the anecdote.

Well hello, cousin. Whereabouts in .dm are ya?

I was in Portsmouth. I attended Ross back when it was still there from 09-11. Love the island. Was planning to go back this year before covid. How about you?

From your comments it sounds like you referring to domestic planes which I have no doubt is true. There is definitely a capacity issue internationally - particularly between China and anywhere near to China and the USA

Is this an actual capacity issue or a case of 'China is big' though? Without knowing more context my instinct would be to assume that, all things being equal, China's population size simply allows it to generate demand at a much greater scale than America can generate supply.

Especially when, depending on your demographic, you're probably visiting America either for college, tourism, or birth tourism. None of these three situations are things that could easily be outsourced to Europe or bulk produced somewhere cheaper because they are largely cultural products of America.

Capacity from China and nearby countries to the USA is hard to get and very expensive right now. We are talking about cargo flights, not passenger ones.

Domestic demand in China doesn't affect chartered flights that only fly internationally.

I know what I'm talking about, I run a logistics in SE Asia - check out my profile :)

I have also been shipping hundreds of thousands of masks for the last 6 weeks to Universities, Government agencies, and other businesses and have seen the capacity change since America realized this was serious.

Some article I was reading (maybe even the same one) said that passenger airplanes normally transport substantial amounts of cargo, but due to the collapse in passenger traffic, it means the cargo capacity is shrinking below demand, hence they may be flying more passenger airplanes with only cargo.

All of the major airlines already have cargo departments (American calls it "cargo" anyway, not freight). Just for those who don't have experience in the industry. It's not like American Airlines is suddenly leasing planes to FedEx like one might guess. The unfortunate aspect is sending something through the cargo department of a passenger airline is a much bigger pain in the ass than going with UPS or FedEx. Their package tracking and delivery estimates are substandard relative to UPS/FedEx. Also they don't deliver to businesses or residences, it's airport to airport.

Isn't this why they charge for extra bags? Because passenger bags takes up space and weight that other people want to pay for? People argue about whether that's fair or not to charge passengers for more baggage when they're already paying, but thinking about a plane being for transfer of things, we can see why they charge more.

Not really. They charge for bags because they can. They didn't used to. Unbundling was a tactic to offset the effects of fares getting lower and lower. Paying for seat selection, drinks, food, etc, all fall in that same category.

True, take Spirit for instance. Price out a flight and they look super low compared to United. However we know there isn't that much margin in air travel. So we re-bundle everything you'd get on United, plus the things I get with my status, and the ticket is the same price or more.

I'm not sure if they can put freight on the same flight as passengers anymore. Before 911 it was done.

They do, certainly.

You have probably seen these being loaded onto passenger planes at airports: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_load_device

This is the last serious terrorist incident I recall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_transatlantic_aircraft_bo...

Last number I have is 60% of air freight is flow under belly in passenger planes. A bit dated and might have changed, so. But it is common practice.

Around 60% of air cargo is flown under belly in PAX aricraft during normal times (last number I have on top of my head, I am currently getting back up to speed on air cargo right now). Which means all the grounded aircraft reduced air freight capacity a lot. Add to this the fact that basically no sea freight was shipped since January, and the backlog is huge.

And usually, shippers don't work directly with the cargo departments of airlines. There are forwarding companies in between, e.g. Flexport or Kühne & Nagel, or DHL freight or Schenker, or XPO,...

> Add to this the fact that basically no sea freight was shipped since January, and the backlog is huge.

Wait...this can't be true. Do you have a citation for that, that would blow my mind!

They lost 6 million TEU (twenty foot equivalent units) due to Chinese new year and Corona.

https://www.joc.com/maritime-news/coronavirus-cost-china-por...

(maybe not a useful question, given the logistical difficulty)

Could idled planes be re-tasked as medivac flights, to load balance hospitalization around the country and avoid locally overloaded resources?

I was thinking about this the other day, when Croatia, besides dealing with coronavirus and its fallout, also got hit by a pretty powerful earthquake and had to evacuate a birthing ward / hospital.

But then I asked myself, that given how much pain and annoyances us regular (and healthy) passengers have to go through on perfectly ordinary flights, is it really feasible to be transporting sick and/or vulnerable individuals in planes? I'm imagining it's very non-trivial, and would require a lot of support (a lot of doctors), so might not even be a net gain...

Sick and vulnerable people get transported by planes all the time. They don't go through the TSA.

Presumably you'd sell each person a row so they could lie down.

How do you staff them properly without pulling people out of the already overloaded system?

You fly doctors and nurses from where they are going there and back. The hospital in my town could take 3 (out of how many...) people from Italy right now. Of course we just found the first local case yesterday so I have no idea how long there will be room. (we are on stay at home for a week already so maybe we will be fine, maybe not - we will know in a year)

I don't think it's that simple. You need EMT's/ambulance crews at a minimum diverted from somewhere, and some amount of presence at airports. You can maybe find nurses from other services to fly, but it's not just them. You'll need specialized cleaning staff, but can probably train them quickly. The medical staff though, that's trickier.

We have many emts and fire fighters (medical training part of the job) waiting for something. Take those on call...

I agree with your point though, we can safely make a difference to someone, but statically it doesn't show up as we dare not spare that many people lest a real local emergency happen.

At risk of sounding snarky, what's the rate of return on finding better uses of their existing capital, like this, compared to just lobbying the government for free money?

Are you under the impression that airline companies wouldn’t do both at the same time if they can get away with it?

Getting a reasonable return on their planes would hamper the case that "woe is us, we're helpless and need money", and yes, it's a common tactic, across many domains, to beg for help based on feigned helplessness.

But if other airliners are doing it, wouldn’t this create a case for the government to let you go bankrupt since you are clearly less efficient then other airliners?

You mean like how it let lots of banks fail because some of them weren't stupid and didn't need the money, proving that the failing ones were just inefficient and deserved to go bankrupt?

It did let a lot of banks fail in 2008-12 as fallout from that crisis.

Somewhere around 500 banks failed, with something in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars of assets.

Just certain banks were propped up because the powers that be decided it would have too big of an impact on things.

Too big to fail and all that.

The point is, the fact that you could point to another business and say "oh, they don't seem to need it" wasn't a definitive refutation of "woe is us we need the money".

Surely the solution is for the bank/airline/etc to issue stock for the government to buy, rather than any bailout.

Nationalize the failed company, keep it running for strategic purposes, and privatize it to new owners at a later date.

Yea that's a big part of what tarp was. Banks sold preferred stock to the treasury.

It wasn't for nationalization though, the treasury didn't vote with its stock while it had it (also it was bought back).

Bank bailouts were given to banks that didn't need it. It was then paid back super fast.

For example US Bancorp didn't partake in much if any of the crazy stuff, and was financially pretty fine, but it still got a bunch of tarp funds it didn't need.

It wasn't always a case of pointing or whatever, it was a giant broad effort to prop up many sectors of the economy.

There is a good reason for that. If they only gave to banks in need, giving tells people that that bank is in trouble. And nobody would do business with the ones identified which guarantees that they are in trouble.

But they lent to everyone, and every bank knew that every other bank was good. Which meant that they all did business with each other.

However the eye-popping sums were misleading since these were short term loans. In fact that USA officially made $15.3 billion in profit off of TARP. (Which was about breakeven if you consider inflation.)

There are also many sets of numbers going around. For example TARP originally was supposed to be $700 billion, but only $475 billion was authorized, we spent $426.4 billion and got $441.7 billion back. The $15.3 billion profit that we made is very close to break-even when you consider inflation.

Unfortunately governments no longer ascribe to free market capitalism but rather facilitate the corporate-crony welfare state. Efficiency is irrelevant when you've got buddies to line the pockets of.

> Unfortunately governments no longer ascribe to free market capitalism

They never did; real-world capitalism has always been crony capitalism, far longer than the mixed economy/welfare state has existed. Laissez-faire was a dishonest propaganda tactics for selling what was actually crony capitalism that was crafted after criticism of capitalism gained currency, not a thing that actually existed or was ascribed to be real governments.

Free market capitalosm but rather facilitate the corpate-crony welfare state.

Greyhound has offered freight shipping for quite a while, the rates are pretty reasonable.

Amtrak also does shipping, including loads on pallets[1].

1: https://www.amtrak.com/express-shipping

Amtrak loads are cheaper for large items. Did a whole interstate move for a few hundred dollars v the 3000 being quoted by a moving company.

There will be winners and losers, mostly losers.

Some of the remaining 747's will be flown to the boneyards a year or two ahead of schedule, never to make the transition to freight. This could be the end of them, with a few exceptions such Air Force One.

Then the current requirements related to 'panic buying' or disruption in supply chains are a bubble. Can't invest in something that is going to be over in three months.

These requirements related to the disease won't provide work for the whole industry. Particularly when the depression sets in and nobody has money to spend on plane flights even if they can fly anywhere.

If Saudi-Russia game of chicken keeps on going, there will be very cheap air tickets. I doubt it will go on much longer than Covid though.

Here's an idea: as part of airline bailout package being discussed in congress, mandate airlift of masks/medical supplies to severely affected areas.

Passengers airlines making big money from shipping cargo is not new.

From 2018 https://thepointsguy.com/news/how-airlines-make-big-bucks-fr...

Airlines don’t make money just from flying passengers: air cargo is a big business. It doesn’t fly just in dedicated freighter aircraft, but also in the belly holds of passenger flights. And right now it’s booming.

Also, the WSJ.com article seems to indicate American Airlines is the first in doing this in this covid-19 crisis, and that other airlines are following.

However I believe it was Korean Air that started to focus on shipping cargo on passenger airlines without having passengers onboard. This timeline makes sense as Korea was the first nation outside of China that had a big spike in covid-19 infections. S. Korea was one of the first nation that saw its citizens barred from entering other nations in this covid-19 crisis.

It does seem that shipping by air is more time and labor efficient than shipping by boat, rail, or truck.

Maybe the next step is to turn the jumbo jets into flying drones. And improve on the fuel efficiency, and maybe switch to fuel cells powered by hydrogen or liquid ammonia instead.

Brilliant, too bad they can't remove seats from the planes to take advantage of upper floor to move lighter/bigger things at good prices. They couldn't get ULDs up there but could definitely stuff a lot of lighter boxes in and tie them down to the floor rails.

Airline seats are bolted down, so they can be removed.

That doesn't give you access to move containers in and out, the doors are very small. Cargo conversion can be done but it is neither cheap, quick or easily reversible.

In times like these temporarily removing seats to allow them to be converted back to passenger planes makes more sense. Even if egress isn't as optimized as a true cargo plane.

Optimized is too small a term. It's neigh on impossible to responsibly load a plane without the required infrastructure in place, weight, balance, shifting loads and so on are all reasons why standardized cargo containers are used. Loose loads in aircraft can have this kind of effect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_eP0zdfZFk

So, assuming you can get the load safely in to the plane, without some kind of containerization inside it you are running a significant risk. Note that the video shows a crash due to one or more Humvees not being properly secured and I'd expect shifting loads to be a bit nicer than that on average but still, that's a risk that need not be taken.

Cargo planes are cargo planes for a reason.

Presumably something could be devised that bolts to the now-empty seat rails and provides a way to secure small cargo. It's entirely possible such a solution wouldn't be cost-effective, though.

Nets.

Not for most commercial planes, no. Slightly off topic, as the number of planes is very small, but I have seen Russian load masters of old Russian military cargo planes applying some, let's say creative, ways of loose loading them.

I still prefer the properly controlled and planned way, so.

> That doesn't give you access to move containers in and out, the doors are very small. Cargo conversion can be done but it is neither cheap, quick or easily reversible.

True, but it would allow workers to use a dolly to easily and more efficiently load small pallets of larger items (compared to carrying them in by hand and trying to buckle them into a seat or something).

Maybe they could use also use the seat attachment points to somehow secure the cargo.

Yes, that is how it is typically done, they throw nets over segments of boxes on the floors and secure them to the seat rails.

The German postal service is still paying for a couple of flights during the night to make sure it can guarantee E+1 delivery. They use regular passenger planes with a special set of seat covers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKORFvrttPo

That's a super neat solution and still uses quite a bit of the capacity of the plane. Looks very stable too.

I imagine they could pack dense/heavy cargo in passenger planes and leave the lighter stuff for proper cargo planes.

Presumably there’s no serious flight issue with planes being bottom heavy.

no, but if the plane is not fitted with restraints and the cargo shifts, it's game over.

Presumably they'd be using aircraft with unit load devices rather than something like the 737 where the luggage compartment is arranged by hand.

Post is flown around during night on PAX planes using special seat covers. Used to at least back when I was working at an airport.

But it's good to see that planes are getting backin the sky for freight.We can use every single tonnage right now, especially for urgent stuff. Heck, I am looking for some capacity ex Shanghai right now that's not ruinously expensive.

EDIT: Typo

Seats move around and are replaced all the time. This is how legroom keeps shrinking.

Right, but only to configurations that have gotten FAA approval, right?

> only to configurations that have gotten FAA approval, right?

No, the FAA doesn't regulate seating layouts.

Weight and balance have to be met, and exit time is verified.

So ... only to FAA approved configurations, then, as judged by weight distribution and exit time.

No, FAA doesn't deal with configurations. They have regs as to how to balance loads, but that's a hot-to rule, not something you need to get approved or they'd have to approve every single flight. Nothing is stopping Southwest from removign all their seats right now.

The thing is, the FAA and ESA are putting targets for evac times. These have to be adhered to. They are not looking at individual configs, just that evac times are kept and properly tested for.

FYI: In case you're not a pilot, I was being a little ironic about weight and balance.

Since people are heavier today, and carrying unweighed baggage into the cabin, weight and balance are actually not being met.

They're blocking off the last 2 rows on the A320neo because of this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/heatherfarmbrough/2019/09/19/wh...

I'm a commercially-rated airplane pilot. I tolerate the pedantic HN comments, but please realize that I know what I'm talking about, and if you're not a pilot, you don't.

In your mind, if there was only a single rule that seats have to be red, would that count as only allowing "approved configurations"? They have to meet a couple simple measurements, but they can do anything at all inside that constraint, putting seats anywhere they want with nothing stopping them. "approved configurations" just isn't accurate.

They're probably hoping things will go back to normal fast enough that the cost of removing and reinstalling seats would outweigh the benefits.

This os currently being done to get critical medical supplies (masks, respirators, coronavirus tests, hazmat suits, etc.) to Czech Republic from China. While we managed to make use of the huge An-124 planes in long term service to NATO to move 100 tons of the stuff at once, the rest is being moved by regular passenger planes - owned by Czech Airlines and China Eastern.

On the photos from the airport you can see Czech firefighters & the army making a human chain unloding lots of boxes from the passenger compartment & of course regular unit load devices from the planes cargo space.

AirSerbia has used two of their passenger airplanes to carry donated medical supplies and personnel from China.

https://www.b92.net/eng/news/business.php?yyyy=2020&mm=03&dd...

The Chinese generosity was excellent here, but at the same time it's disappointing that other European countries couldn't spare any real help for poorer countries nearby.

Landing slots aren’t a constraint, so maybe it’s good enough to fill the hold and take advantage of the fuel economy of a lightly loaded plane.

Maybe? Planes only have about a quarter of their max weight available for passengers the rest is the plane itself and the fuel so I'm not sure how much you'd save by running light.

Maybe flying slower would be a way to make cargo flights more efficient but planes are pretty tuned to their cruising speed so maybe even that wouldn't have a big effect.

Typical cruise in airliners is about 10% faster than their most efficient speed, which translates to a 15% or so higher fuel burn per distance.

You also do not need to take off with max fuel weight-- and airliners these days rarely do, so that leaves more mass budget for cargo. For the past couple decades, airlines have been really focused on eliminating weight and using the efficiency increases this brings to reduce fuel weight, further increasing efficiency.

Across huge scales, this can have surprising effects. United figured they saved $300k/year of fuel by printing their in flight magazine on lighter paper.

According to their site they ran ~1.6 million flights in 2019 so they saved $0.18/flight which across their operating revenue of $43.259 billion is a rounding error even when it adds up to 300k.

A rounding error, but still worthwhile. $300k here, $300k there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money ;).

Anyways, the main point: passengers and their luggage on a 737-sized craft might weigh 15,000 kilos. You might save 340 kilograms/hour by flying slower, too, so a 6 hour flight without passengers could move 17 tonnes more than it did with pax onboard, so long as you have space for what you're shipping.

I read not long ago that the 747 was designed specifically for this purpose, in case the design failed for passenger use it could be repurposed.

You are right...but there is a bit more to the story. The 747 program was launched on the back of a failed bid to design a cargo airplane for the military, the Lockheed C5 Galaxy was the winner. This failed military transport design was then picked up and was the basis from which the 747 team started work. This is the reason that the cockpit is on the upper deck, as opposed to the lower deck as in the A380, one of the design requirements for the military transport was a front loading bay and a cockpit on the lower level would not have allowed that.

You are right that the 747 program definitely considered both freight and passenger versions throughout their design process, but that was pretty much assured from the start given that the plane they designed had its roots in cargo.

I have also heard the Boeing believed that supersonic airplanes would become de rigeuer for passenger travel within 10 years or so, so they made the 747 freight-capable so they wouldn't be completely worthless in the future.

I really hope we allow these companies to fail. Let it happen. A safety net should only protect people who can’t help themselves.

I’d hold a little celebration of life party if I heard American was done and dead and over as an airline.

I don’t think airlines deserve to be punished though. It’s a tough industry with not a lot of profit. They didn’t cause the pandemic. Companies are also punished by shareholders for sitting on too much cash.

I don't necessary disagree with the rest of your comment, but to me the last sentence falls on the "pro" side to let them fail.

If shareholders like that are wiped out then maybe next time they won't punish companies for having a cash reserve!

It's funny, I looked out my airplane's window earlier and saw a FedEx labeled package getting loaded with luggage. I thought it was curious and came upon this article around 15 minutes later. Makes sense now.

What would cruise lines do? They suggested using it as temporary hospitals but what could they realistically do with their ships without keeping it idle for the next 7-9 months?

https://archive.md/BGXqQ

could recently retired cargo aircraft (ex FedEx/UPS/DHL) be pulled back into service to help deliver critical supplies around the World?

I imagine quiet a few cargo B727, B757, A300s and even some B747F aircrafts sitting at Mojave.

They already have too many idle planes that used to carry passengers. It's down to what's cheaper/safer: bringing mothballed planes back in use and making sure they are airworthy, or adapting the current passenger plane fleet to carry freight. Which likely means nothing more than covering the seats with sturdy covers to accommodate stuff like airmail or emergency medical supplies. Dismantling seats is more expensive and less useful since squeezing bulky cargo through a passenger door is "a bit" of a hassle.

> Which likely means nothing more than covering the seats with sturdy covers to accommodate stuff like airmail or emergency medical supplies

No, that's not how it works. Air freight is containerized, so you need space that can take those containers, and converting a passenger plane into a freighter takes about three months.

> converting a passenger plane into a freighter takes about three months

No, that's not how it works. Airlines will hate to make the best out of a bad situation which means maximizing results while minimizing expenditure. If we're talking about (quote) "emergency medical supplies" (and not only) it will be done exactly as I described. Sturdy seat covers and airmail bags are actually a practice today for some companies.

And rules change in emergencies. Converting a GM, Tesla, or Ford factory to build ventilators would take fornever. And yet here we are with them volunteering to do it on short notice.

So, we can adapt.

Re-use, reduce, repurpose, redirect. An axiom for the current situation.

Now there's a use for the 737 MAX. Assuming pilots think it's safe to fly one now I guess...

> Assuming pilots think it's safe to fly one now I guess...

1) They never were safe.

2) After being grounded for up to a year, it will take 2 weeks of maintenance each to make them airworthy after the repairs are done (wiring, FOD in fuel tanks, software and hardware updates for MCAS system.)

No passengers, just cargo? Probably ok if the pilot 1) disables MCAS, and 2) ensures a forward center of gravity, so the MCAS workaround (slow, high aoa) becomes moot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com