Old passenger planes converted into cargo haulers

The price of air freight of goods jumped to a record high before Christmas 2021, driven by robust e-commerce demand, port congestion and capacity bottlenecks from airlines’ limited pandemic schedules.

These trends also led to a boom in a small but profitable corner of the aviation industry: the conversion of passenger planes into planes that could carry cargo. A record 164 planes were converted to freighters last year, according to flight data company Cirium.

Since then, air freight rates have eased, in part because of the influx of new capacity into the market from the rebound in air travel. Air freight flies in the bellies of custom passenger planes and freight trucks, most of which are converted planes. The air freight index in the Baltic region is down more than 48% from last year.

All over the world, at facilities from Texas to Singapore, technicians strip old seats, hoppers, lavatories and other plane parts, leaving behind crumbs, toys and other signs of the life of the former planes that carried passengers.

Technicians then strengthen the floor to carry heavy cargo loads, and a special entrance is cut out and a door installed so that cargo can be loaded onto the aircraft.

The process can take months and cost millions of dollars, in some cases more than $30 million per aircraft, including maintenance. Companies that specialize in this work say they are still collecting orders to convert planes into cargo ships, despite lower freight rates.

CNBC visited Aspire MRO and Mammoth Freighters in Fort Worth, Texas — where companies are converting wide-body Boeing 777 planes into cargo-carrying supertankers — to see how the process works.

Watch the video to learn more.