jbmcnamee
Interesting. I wonder who will step in and buy the four Belugas for their own operations. UPS? FedEx? DHL?
Interesting. I wonder who will step in and buy the four Belugas for their own operations. UPS? FedEx? DHL?
Some great ideas just don’t scale-up economically. I have a friend who, back in the 20-teens, flew left-seat in Global Supertankers: B747-400s gutted and crammed with liquid tanks and high-pressure pumps. The beast was capable of delivering nearly 20,000 gallons of pressurized water/retardant on wildfires, in one pass. It could be on station almost anywhere in the world in 20 hours. Sadly, the owner (Evergreen) had financial problems and reverted and sold their last 747 in 2021. Sure could use one in California these days
Had over 400 staff for those four aircraft. French media said the problem was the height of the cargo space did not lend its-self to modern air-freight containers, and flying containers is where the every day bread and butter comes from.
At the start Airbus thought the market would change with more odd-shaped things being flown, and that did not happen.
I wonder how the payload capacity of the Beluga compares to the AN-124. The AN-124s seem to do reasonable business flying large and outsized cargo around. However, the AN-124 has ground level ramps and self-loading/unloading equipment. The Beluga needs special loading and unloading equipment.
Beluga is probably cheaper to operate though.