The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly stricken the passenger airline industry. But the air cargo segment has been a rare beneficiary, with e-commerce sales and scarcity of widebody passenger jets driving up cargo yields and demand for cargo jets, according to Boeing’s 20-year cargo outlook. Boeing had already, in early October, released cargo-jet demand projections as part of a broader 20-year commercial aviation outlook. But Boeing’s just-released cargo-specific outlook provides more insight into factors driving demand, such as the pandemic. Overall, air cargo capacity is down 25% since January. But strong demand has pushed up cargo revenue 16%, with yields jumping 42%, Boeing says. During the next 20 years, the Chicago airframer anticipates airlines will need 2,430 additional cargo aircraft, among them 930 new widebodies and some 1,500 jets converted from passenger to cargo aircraft. Boeing anticipates strong demand in the coming years for 777Fs and 767Fs. And though the 767F is an ageing design – Boeing delivered the first of the type in 1982 – it could remain in production for the foreseeable future, says Boeing vice-president of commercial marketing Darren Hulst. “I think that continues through this decade,” he says of the 767. Boeing holds outstanding orders for 80 767s, including 49 cargo variants, most for UPS and FedEx. The remainder are military variants, according to Boeing’s website. Boeing also produces 747-8Fs (but expects to stop manufacturing that jet in 2022), and speculation abounds about whether Boeing will develop a freighter variant of its 777X. The forecasted 2,430 new and converted freighters would bring the global air freighter to 3,260 aircraft by 2039, up from 2,010 today, Boeing predicts. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a primary short-term driver of freighter demand, as has e-commerce, says Hulst. “We’ve seen a growth in the number of aircraft operated as freighters. Aircraft have been taken out of storage, reactivated to fly because of demand for air cargo,” he says. “Airlines, freighter operators [and] wet-lease operators have been using their fleets about 20% more than normal.” The need for more freighters stems from the sharp decline in the number of widebody passenger aircraft plying the globe’s skies. Carriers took many widebody jets out of service amid the pandemic, resulting in a roughly 60% year-on-year decline in available cargo space in the bellies of those jets. All-cargo jets have picked up some of the slack; capacity in those aircraft is up 13% year-on-year, Boeing says.

Source: Cirium

Asiana Airlines — most recently the subject of an acquisition by rival Korean Air — swung back into the black in its third-quarter earnings, helped by an uptick in cargo revenue and a steep reduction in costs. For the quarter ended 30 September, the carrier eked out an operating profit of W5.8 billion ($5.2 million), reversing the W45.1 billion loss it made during the same period last year. Revenue fell 53% year-on-year to W731 billion, led mainly by a collapse in passenger travel demand, which plummeted 83% year-on-year. Broken down by network, international passenger revenue saw a sharp 87% plunge year-on-year to W122 billion, while domestic passenger revenue fell 42% to W50.3 billion. However, any further decline was offset by a 54% increase in cargo revenue to W485 billion for the quarter. Expenses declined 55% year-on-year to W725 billion, which Asiana notes stemmed from reduced flying activity. The Star Alliance carrier also swung back to a net profit of W2.3 billion for the quarter, reversing last year’s net loss of W170 billion. Domestic RPKs for the period slipped 27% year-on-year, while ASKs fell 14%. The carrier reported a domestic passenger load factor of 74%, about 13 percentage points lower compared to the same quarter last year. International RPKs, meanwhile, plunged 93% year-on-year, with ASKs declining 79%. Load factor for the quarter stood at just 27%, 56 percentage points lower year-on-year. Asiana’s third-quarter earnings come days after rival Korean Air announced it would be acquiring the troubled carrier. The deal, worth some W1.8 trillion, ends months of speculation about who would be Asiana’s new owners, after failed attempts by parent company Kumho Industrial to sell its controlling stake.

Source: Cirium

French investigators have determined that a Boeing 737-800 experienced two successive unreliable air data incidents, after an overnight technical check failed to uncover a latent flaw in its angle-of-attack sensor. The Transavia aircraft (F-GZHO) had been ferried from Norwich to Paris Orly on 7 February 2018, after undergoing maintenance, but its crew had to deal with airspeed, altitude and angle-of-attack "disagree" alerts during the flight. Investigation authority BEA says the aircraft underwent an overnight check at Orly, but a technician did not “strictly comply” with troubleshooting procedures in a fault isolation manual. As a result he did not test the stall management yaw damper computer to see whether it had recorded a failure – a test required after an angle-of-attack disagree alert. The aircraft was cleared to operate a service to Marrakech the following day, 8 February, but its pilots – one of whom was under instruction for captaincy – also experienced similar problems to those of the inbound crew. They ultimately decided to return to Orly. BEA says the maintenance team which inspected the aircraft noticed that the right-hand angle-of-attack sensor was “abnormally resistant” to being turned, and emitted “unusual clicking noises”. Tests on the yaw damper computer revealed error messages about a sensor anomaly, “requiring its replacement”, the inquiry adds. Examination of the faulty sensor by KLM Engineering and Maintenance in Amsterdam found damage to several internal components. The sensor has two resolvers, which transmit their data to aircraft systems, and one of these resolvers was blocked in rotation. Inspection of the resolver revealed a viscous and tacky substance preventing movement of parts. BEA says it could not determine whether the substance was present when the resolver or sensor were manufactured in 2014, or whether it was the result of later exposure. The aircraft was delivered new to Transavia in February 2015 and the sensor had not undergone disassembly since. But analysis of the aircraft’s flight data since its delivery revealed a gradually evolving dysfunction of the right-hand angle-of-attack sensor over the aircraft’s three years in service. The values from this sensor changed in “increasingly longer steps”, says BEA, compared with those from the sensor installed on the left-hand side. BEA says it could not establish why the flaw, present during the aircraft’s entire service life, led to the generation of alerts after the aircraft had spent time undergoing maintenance in Norwich. It points out, however, that one of the maintenance operations required the two angle-of-attack sensors to be manually rotated by 30°. No anomaly had been noticed, says the inquiry, but the handling might have “exacerbated the dysfunction” before the ferry flight to Paris. BEA adds that use of the fault isolation manual during the subsequent technical inspection at Orly would have ensured a “more complete” check. “The failure would have probably been detected and the sensor replaced,” it states.

Source: Cirium