News From UPS and Airbus UPDATE

Bloomberg reports this morning that UPS and Airbus have agreed that either can cancel the order for 10 A380F freighters previously announced and/or set a new delivery date for the contracted aircraft. UPS will decide later this year whether it will retain the order.

The original order was placed in 2005 with delivery to take place 2009-12. Because that schedule was to be delayed at least 8 months the companies went into negotiation over the future of the order.

UPS recently ordered 27 B767-300 ER freighters and says they are for short haul routes only.

Nick Jones, my pal who sells pigs doesn't know anything about aircraft, but he does know a fair amount about transportation and logistics, having a degree in the field. He tells me that unlike airlines, air freight companies deal in two things: cubic feet and pounds, and they do one thing only which is move those cubic feet and pounds from the point of origin to the point of delivery.

It stands to reason, therefore, that any addition of cubic feet and poundage capacity to the fleet anywhere in the system is just that much less that will be purchased elsewhere. That's not good for Airbus. It also may mean that UPS is getting ready to retire a lot of those lovely Cammacorp DC8 conversions and other fleet units that are getting long in the tooth.

Time will tell. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: I guess I was a little closer than I thought, because it's being rumored that UPS is going to retire all of its B727 three holers, which would explain the need for some new short to medium haul freighters. Apparently the DC8s are so useful they'll stay on for a while.