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Converting passenger planes to cargo jets costs millions [video]
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago- reinforcing floors with aluminum beams - cutting a large cargo door into the hull - getting it re-certified there, saved you a click
- zhte415 3y agoThank you!
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoYeah this video was 99% background, fluff, and B roll.
- Symbiote 3y agoI was about to write the same. I wondered if the script was generated by a bad AI. It was so repetitive and free of useful information.
- King-Aaron 3y agoThe comment I was hoping to see.
- contrarian1234 3y agoWhich part costs $30M?
- LeonM 3y agoMostly the parts having to be certified, and than the recertification of the entire plane. FAA approval is expensive. For example: many airliners have switched to iPads to be used in the cockpit (saves weight in bulky manuals, folders, rugged laptops, etc.). Reportedly an 'FAA approved' iPad mount and charger costs well north of $3K, excluding the installation and reapproval costs.
- tyingq 3y agoIf it sounds overzealous, consider things like "Positioning must not obstruct visual or physical access to aircraft controls and displays, flightcrew ingress or egress, or external vision' So all the certification requirements mean somebody had to map out where it goes and how. Including CAD drawings, any recurring maintenance tasks, research on sub-supplier quality, troubleshooting procedures, a reliable replacement supply chain, and so on. And have all that reviewed, documented and approved for each type/subtype of aircraft it's certified on. If the process were more lax, it's not hard to imagine a problem with pilot visibility of some control (or whatever) starting a bad chain of events.
- contrarian1234 3y agoI'm just curious, how does it work in practice? Is there like a huge number of FAA government employees that sit around waiting to be called up and then they are all flown out to some location where they frantically flip through binders of rules to validated everything is up to spec?
- placesalt 3y agoI could be wrong, but I think the more time-consuming part of certification is initial certification of the procedure - a company (eg a company that offers modifications to aircraft owners) will gain certification for their ability to perform a specific procedure on a specific aircraft type. They can then do that procedure on customer aircraft. I believe the certification of the aircraft itself is less time-consuming; more of a confirmation that the approved-upon procedure was followed.
- icoder 3y agoI wanna go one step further and say they did not really answer the question.
- ggm 3y agoNo, the 380 won't make as good cargo plane as the last 747 because that bump really pays off, for straight through loading and the 380 can't do that with mid nose pilot
- fkarg 3y agoYeah the 747 was originally designed as a freighter in the first place, the A380 wasn't
- hef19898 3y agoOne of the main reasons why the A380 Pax is a bad freighter is floor load. Reinforcing it, the floor of a Pax A380, is not economically abd Airbus never built a dedicated freighter version of. Which is a pitty, because more often than not cargo capacity is limited by volume and not weight. If at any rate possible, it is avoided to open the nose of a 747, tue cabin is pressurized and sealing it again properly is major PITA. That, and most 747 freighters started their lives as Pax planes, and tjose noses cannot be be opened anyway. Through loading is obly helpful for long cargo, andbyou can even squeeze 10 foot containers through the cargo door of a MD-11. Which leaves the odd specialty cargo job and military applications. And for RoRo loading, the 747 nose is too far above the ground.
- muppetman 3y agoWhat an absolute garbage video. You could condense down its content into about 5 sentences. I'm annoyed I watched that. It was worse than any podcast I've listed to (and most of them are garbage)
- gregoriol 3y agoCould you condense it down into 5 sentences for us?
- londons_explore 3y agoLots of people want to convert passenger planes to cargo planes. There is a 3 year backlog to do it at plants all over the world, done by Boeing and 3rd parties. The bulk of the process involves removing the seats (which will be resold), reinforcing the floor, and cutting a new large cargo door. There, done. 3 sentences. I don't think there was any other interesting content in the video. Somehow the video mentioned removing the seats over and over again.
- nikau 3y agoYou didn't mention to smash like and subscribe
- amelius 3y agoThanks! I still wonder why that costs up to $30M though ...
- londons_explore 3y agoVideo didn't explain. But I suspect there are a lot of conversion steps it didn't mention. And anything todo with jet aircraft is expensive anyway.
- flybrand 3y agoAirframe certification? Regulatory over sight? Lack of competitors? Alternate use of their assets / personnel?
- supernova87a 3y agoRelated cargo airplane factoid (and I would be glad to hear about this and more from others too): One thing I learned through listening to stories about Fedex and UPS is that their fleets are (or maybe were at the time of my learning this) surprisingly old. Or that is to say, sometimes it is surprising to learn that these leading freight companies fly planes that are several generations old, like MD-11s, or old 767s. The reason for this is that these operations generally fly planes for just a few hours each night, being focused on overnight delivery, and hub-spoke swapping of packages from and to destinations. And when an asset is in use for only a few hours each day, it is less important how fuel efficient or modern it is. It just has to get the job done in a basic way, and not break that often. A clunker is ok to be relatively inefficient because you only need to use it infrequently (compared to a passenger airplane, which by comparison is in nearly constant use to get as much revenue $ out of it and you want it to be economical in cost for that operation). So these fleets have planes that are 20+ years old and feel little pressure to modernize from that point of view. I remember realizing this fact when I heard that Avalon (Catalina Island) freight / mail is (or was) served by an old DC-3 every day. Doesn't matter how old the plane is if it really only has to operate for 30 minutes each day. I think that one retired though.
- XorNot 3y agoIt's also worth noting that airframes in general are usually governed by number of flight hours more then anything else. So if you're not racking them up, then all your wear parts are lasting a lot longer.
- hackingmaster12 3y ago$500M
- londons_explore 3y agoImagine you just removed the seats but didn't make any other changes. You can probably remove the seats with 3 guys and 3 days, so very cheap. Then, use it as a freight aircraft, but just load everything into the top deck with trolleys that fit through the normal aircraft doors. Sure - unloading will take more time, and there are certain types of cargo you cannot take (but you can still put them on the bottom deck!). But you can pay a lot of loading/unloading people for a lot of years with $30M saved in the conversion.
- amelius 3y agoI think we should remove all chairs from passenger planes too. I mean, why should destroying the planet be comfortable?