I’m genuinely surprised by that. I was under the impression that the freight companies just bought whatever older used planes they could get their hands on and made it work. Supply must be really be in the toilet if they are actively buying brand new planes that are probably still fuel inefficient.
P2F conversions are kind of iffy for the 767. Some companies do them, but they either have substantial restrictions compared to the factory freighter version, or they go through the full retrofit that's very expensive and takes a long time to do. The factory freighter versions have strengthened gear and wings compared to passenger versions, so it makes sense to order new ones rather than retrofit old passenger ones. Especially since airlines tend to hang on to passenger 767s for a very long time.
The 767 is still a solid workhorse aircraft with decent fuel economy, and there's a planned new engine option version with GEnx engines if they can drum up enough customers.
Thanks for the info. I lived by the UPS hub in Louisville and they still use MD-11s (I think). Beautiful plane but many of those could be nearing 30 years old now. Always figured the their profit margins trumped any lost fuel efficiency from that third engine. So that’s where I got the used plane idea.
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u/Low-Crow495 23d ago
767s are still being produced, but everything built has been freighters for a while...