On November 9th, Air Canada held their third quarter conference call, reporting their
financial results for the period, along with one announcement that stood out on several occasions.
CEO Calin Rovinescu said early on in the call that Air Canada
is looking to expand into the dedicated freighter market.
It’s worth mentioning right away that Air Canada’s been operating
hundreds of cargo-only flights since Covid hit.
To do that, they’ve been flying aircraft with lower deck cargo only,
and they also removed seats from a few 777s and A330s to carry lighter cargo in the passenger cabin.
Dedicated freighters though, are a different story entirely.
According to Air Canada’s Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Lucie Guillemette,
Air Canada Cargo is the company’s freight arm, and offers cargo services on the lower deck of their
passenger aircraft, basically anywhere that Air Canada flies.
Although they don’t actually fly their own cargo aircraft, so to speak,
this isn’t the first time they’ve tried this.
At various points throughout their history, Air Canada flew Douglas DC-8s, DC-9s,
Boeing 727s, and other aircraft as freighters.
Their most recent all-cargo aircraft operations took place between 1983 and 1994,
with a fleet of 6 DC-8-70s.
They also flew 747 combis up until 2003, which could carry up to 7 pallets of cargo on the main deck.
So, with all that in mind, the 767s in question are all owned and,
one would assume, reasonably inexpensive to convert and bring back into service.
However, they didn’t specify on the call which 767s these would be,
and they had 30 of them across mainline and Rouge at the start of the year.
The final 5 mainline ones, all former Canadian Airlines aircraft, averaged over 30 years of age,
and were all flown to the desert over the summer.
Despite the fact that an even older 767 retired in September 2019
now flies for Cargojet, it might not be any of these.
That turns our attention to Rouge, which flew 25 767s that were all retired at once
from passenger service in May.
Quite a few of these are not nearly as old, the fleet ranges from 17 to 30 years of age,
and most of them do have winglets as well.
Air Canada went on to say that they have the opportunity to convert
“a couple” aircraft in early 2021, with the possibility of adding more as time goes on.
Now, of course, this is entirely speculation on my part, but it sounds as though they might’ve
gotten some conversion slots with IAI in Tel Aviv, or with Boeing themselves somewhere else.
The actual 767 conversion involves essentially cutting out a large portion of the fuselage for
a cargo door on the main deck of the aircraft, and reconfiguring the interior to allow for
easier loading, among other upgrades.
Realistically though, it could be any of the aircraft that are fully owned,
depending on the maintenance costs over the next few years.
The current hurdle for Air Canada, as speakers mentioned on numerous occasions,
is coming to an agreement with their pilots for these in-house freighter operations.
That’s always a contentious topic, seeing as they would likely want to pay pilots
less in order to make the operation more profitable.
On the call, Rovinescu himself said in response to an analyst question that:
Should a fair agreement come through, it will be nice to see these 767s flying again,
especially if they paint them in Air Canada’s new livery!
What are your thoughts on this news from Air Canada?
Let me know what you think in the comments down below.
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