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I'm surprised they aren't going to bother with trying a freighter. The 747-8F is still being sold; it's got almost twice the payload weight lift capacity of th
by mikece 8y ago
I'm surprised they aren't going to bother with trying a freighter. The 747-8F is still being sold; it's got almost twice the payload weight lift capacity of the C-17 and 88% of the lift capacity of the decades-old Antanov An-124 (though the C-17 and An-124 can have taller and wider items, like tanks and helicopters, loaded into the cargo hold than the 747-8F can).
- Already__Taken 8y agoWatched a youtube video so now I'm an expert. The A380 runs out of load capacity long before all the volume is used up so your cargo flights are moving a lot of empty plane.
- vermontdevil 8y agoThis blog explains well why there’s no a380-F https://www.flexport.com/blog/airbus-a380-no-cargo-equivalent https://www.flexport.com/blog/airbus-a380-no-cargo-equivalen...
- mikece 8y agoGood points, especially the notion that a freighter version would hit the weight limit long before filling up. Makes me wonder if a secondary market could be available for air freight companies: no frills, on-our-schedule-not-yours, inexpensive hops between cargo hubs similar to how it's possible (for active duty and some military vets) to catch dirty-cheap rides on the heavy cargo lifters as long as you make your way to the US point of departure and don't mind making your way from the European/Asian/etc point of arrival.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThe point of air freight is speed. "Just fit it on the plane whenever you find it convenient" kind of defeats the point.
- FabHK 8y agoThe freight is moved expediently. The human pax ("self-loading freight") flies along cheaply whenever the freighters fly.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThe A380 is a pig of a plane. For it's weight it doesn't have much cargo capacity and it costs a lot of money (fuel) to put all that aircraft weight in the air. Other cargo aircraft have a lot less aircraft weight for the amount of cargo weight the carry and that makes them far more economical. Freight is always a thin margin business. Money spent on fuel to get the cargo where it's going is just the cost of doing business. Money getting spent on fuel getting the aircraft where the cargo is going is an overhead cost to be minimized. Also, the C-17 isn't a very good comparison because it was designed with the expectation that it would sacrifice capacity and economy for performance. When it was developed in the 90s it was very obvious that getting as many tanks as possible to France as quickly as possible (the job the C-5 was designed for) was rapidly becoming less important than the ability to utilize smaller runways in less developed nations.