US Airlines Are Filling Passenger Seats With Cargo

The New York Daily News reports:



Airlines have long carried freight alongside passengers, but it never made sense to use their planes exclusively for cargo. That changed in March. As companies eliminated thousands of flights, cargo space became scarce and the price of sending goods by plane shot up, creating an economic case for repurposing idled passenger planes.

“The cargo business is keeping aircraft, which would otherwise be parked, in the air and given us all more hope than otherwise that we will come out of this,” said Dominic Kennedy, the head of cargo operations for Virgin.

In the United States, each of the three largest airlines started running cargo-only flights in March. American Airlines had not flown an all-cargo trip in more than three decades. Now, it is flying 140 a week.