I’m repetitive, since I had already posted this suggesiton in the old forum, but I’d like to re-up it again to get some updated informations about it’s viability. I’ll just copy my old post.
[i]"Another question/suggestion:
As many of us aviation nuts know, most of the cargo airlines buy pax planes to subsequently have them converted into all cargo planes, sometimes by the manufacturers themselves and some other times by contracting specialized industries like TAECO in HKG, Aeronavali in Italy, Bedek in Israel and so on.
I.e. FedEx is buying pax 757s and converting them into an all cargo configuration and in the past, together with UPS, it bought many of the pax MD-11s and converted them into freighters at Aeronavali’s Venice and Naples centres, many smaller operators are buying and converting 737-300s and -400s.
Let’s take as an example the 737-300: there’s plenty of them available in the pax version and it was also produced in a QC or pure cargo version, but in much smaller numbers. I think it could be a very good plane for cargo ops, due to its good compromise between payload and range, and being a less older plane it will need less mainteinance than 727s and similar, with reduced costs to an operator.
My question is: would it be possible to introduce a feature which allows the conversion of pax planes into all cargo planes after buying (not leasing) them, and which obviously charges the airline for the conversion?
For 737s and 757s you already have the F versions data, as well as for the DC-10s, MD-11s and so on, so I suppose it would only be a matter of introducing the “freighter conversion” option, the issue then lies on finding a price for the conversion, an ATR 42 conversion ranges from 300-500.000$ for a bulk freighter conversion, to a 1.4-1.6 mio $ for a full freighter conversion, for further information, I’ve found a [/i]leaflet[i] by Precision Conversions, they list a 757 conversion with a price varying between 4.5 and 4.7 mio. USD"
[/i]Kind regards