Boeing scored a crushing victory at the 2018 Farnborough Air Show with orders for a total of 88 freighters. In comparison, Airbus had total freighter sales at the show of zero! This highlights the almost complete lack of competition for customers on the freighter front. The issue has caught the attention of Eric Schulz, the chief commercial officer at Airbus, and he has acknowleged that it’s time for his group to address the space.
Airbus does offer the A330-200F, which is a derivitive of its A330 jetliner family. Build at the factory as a freighter, it offers high efficiency operation andh less noise and emissions than other mid-sized cargo aircraft in service today. It also offers full operational commonality with the entire family of Airbus fly-by-wire airliners. Etihad Airways recently announced that it will be selling its five A330-200F cargo planes in an effort to focus on what it’s referring to as “core” routes out of Abu Dhabi.
Airbus also offers to convert A330’s from a passenger aircraft to freighter, called the A330P2F. The final offering in the linup is the A300-600ST. More commonly referred to as the Beluga, the plane has a modified cargo bay designed to transport oversized payloads. The 5 Beluga’s currently in service are all operated by Airbus to transport sections of Airbus aircrafft being assembled from one fatory to another.
Airbus had originally accepted orders for a freighter version of it’s flagship A380 aircraft. The plane boasted the largest payload capacity of any cargo aircraft in production, with the exception of two Antonov An-225 Mriya’s. Production of the A380 freighter was suspended in 2006 as the initial passenger aircraft delivery schedule was slipping due to manufacturing issues and the aircraft coming in over weight. Dubbed the A380F, the aircraft had attracted 27 orders after first being announced. Later, 20 of these orders were cancelled, with the remaining 7 being converted to the passenger version. The A380F was later completely removed from the Airbus website in 2015.
Image from www.airbus.com