The Cargo Crane spreads its wings by deploying parent company Lufthansa’s passenger aircraft which have had their seat pallets removed in order to transport urgent consignments from China to Europe. The passenger to cargo conversions complement the carrier’s own freighter fleet’s main deck capacity. Concurrently, sister company Austrian Airlines has also turned passenger aircraft into temporary freighters to fly cargo from China and Malaysia to Vienna, Austria.
Unlike Lufthansa’s passenger division, whose activities have come to a virtual standstill, many Lufthansa Cargo employees have to work overtime these days. Due to the current bottleneck situation in air freight on trade lanes between the Far East and Europe, caused by the absence of passenger aircraft and thus the loss of lower deck capacity, airlines are tending to convert passenger jetliners into freighters. A task that is carried out by mechanics of Lufthansa Cargo and sister company Austrian Airlines, who are currently clearing the cabins and removing the seats on six passenger aircraft in order to accommodate freight there.
Six pax to cargo conversions
At Lufthansa, four aircraft will be converted over the Easter period, enabling Lufthansa Cargo to operate 35 weekly additional flights with the aircraft that, once the seats are removed, can each
carry up to 30 tons of cargo in their cabins and belly holds. This allows Lufthansa Cargo to offer the market two daily flights between Frankfurt and Shanghai, and one daily roundtrip
Frankfurt-Beijing. Freight capacity at Munich will also be upped through two converted A350-900s that will operate daily flights from MUC to Shanghai and Beijing.
In nearby Austria, local Lufthansa Group member Austrian Airlines will utilize a Boeing 767-300 and one of their B777-200s passenger jetliners to fly air freight from Easter onwards. The two
aircraft will take off from Vienna to Shanghai (8 x week), Beijing (5 x week), Penang in Malaysia (2 x week) and Xiamen (1 x week).

Push in capacity
Thanks to the quick change of passenger aircraft to freighters, a total of 51 additional weekly cargo flights from Germany and Austria to the Far East and back will be operated by Lufthansa Cargo
(35) and sister Austrian Airlines (16). This adds to the capacity of 14 Lufthansa Cargo operated Boeing 777 freighter flights per week between Frankfurt and destinations on the Chinese mainland,
offering the market 1,440 tons of main deck capacity.
Carsten Spohr, Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO of Deutsche Lufthansa AG lauded the latest activities of his company’s freight subsidiary: “Especially now, cargo flights are of the
utmost importance for medical facilities, but also for manufacturers and large corporations. We are doing everything we can to maintain supply chains during this crisis and ensure that people
receive sufficient supplies. This is an important part of our corporate responsibility as a leading European aviation group."

Lufthansa restructures passenger business
Otherwise, the manager has had little to be happy about these past few days. The airline is losing one million euros an hour due to the near standstill in passenger traffic leading to the
grounding of 700 of its fleet of 760 passenger aircraft.
To reduce the drain of cash the Executive Board decided to introduce short time work for at least 31,000 staff employed in Germany until the end of August and tens of thousands more in other
countries. Lufthansa’s global headcount totals 135,000. Further, all operational activities of its 2002 incepted, low-cost subsidiary, Germanwings will be terminated, and the passenger fleet of
Lufthansa and the entire group, including Swiss, Brussels Airlines, Austrian Airlines and Eurowings, will be considerably scaled down since air travel will need years to reach pre-Covid-19
levels, forecasts Mr. Spohr.
Heiner Siegmund
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Rayhan ahmed (Monday, 13 April 2020 23:41)
As a British ramper at Heathrow I am struggling to come to terms with loading cargo on a pax aircraft converted to a freighter . Firstly cargo
Hold front and rear plus hold 5 on
A 777 and A330 is a easy operation to
Load and offload freight with belt
X 2 fmcs .
Now trying to get freight in the passenger seats is another question ok fine in removing all the passenger seats
Like ELAL has done on one of there
777. Now how do you get the freight up onto a 777 or 330 passenger cabin you
Can’t use a FMC because none of
The 777 or 330 have a side cargo door
So what do you do ???? Answer using Max of 4 belt loaders and guide them to
The passenger doors and load the cargo ... physically which must be one
Hell of a job plus men power with higher
Downtime of the aircraft specially on
A turn . If the cargo is boxes Or other
Goods they needed be loaded via the belt and then tied down on the seats one after the other. The workload must
Be immense and ramp crew morale must be extremely low tieing down
Ie 4 boxes or more on each seat depending on the load sheet and moving then physically from the doors ways needs a lot extreme physically
Effort .
Now removing seats from a 777 which
ELAL has done makes it even harder in
Regards to lockdown did ELAL make way for this conversion by removing the seats by having a facility for tie down
As looking at the photographs of the
777 ELAL.
This also depends how many passenger
Seats need to removed now you can’t just starting removing all passenger seats on a 777 or 330 this would highly
Stupid.
This ramp operation of loading and offloading cargo from pax aircraft seats
With or without will carry on well into
Lockdown is lifted and might last a couple weeks which We would call
A ( post lockdown ) running a couple
Of weeks of operating passenger
Aircraft as freighters.
Ramp operation on a passenger which is being used as a freighter is not a easy
Option ie the workload, manpower ,
Downtime etc .
Lufthansa has this easy option on there
A320/A321 which passenger seats can be tied down with cargo which would be
Easy compared to a A330. /B777 and
And operating then as freighters without even removing the passenger
Seats ... This would be the same with
Germanwings , eurowings , TAP, Austrian , on there 320/321.
Turkish airlines 777/330 passenger aircraft are going out as freighters from
Heathrow but I am not aware that they
Have removed the passenger seats or
Are tieing cargo down on them because I have not been to work since my uk
Govt leave of 80per cent salary from
Menzies Aviation since the end of
March 2020.
Now I still can not imagine how they are
Securing these cargo to the passenger
Seats is it via rope or straps .. with the
Straps you need a point for locking in
Like I explained in my other comment in tieing down animals in hold 5 the
Other week .
The cargo strapped to the seats need
To be stable no movement the cargo
Must not be moving left right and centre and falling about while in flight .
The complex of putting cargo on passenger seats is very hard to imagine
Because I have no conducted this
Kind of ramp operation before since
Being on the ramp since 2002.
Rayhan ahmed (Monday, 13 April 2020 23:47)
I imagine Lufthansa removing
The seats on the A330/B777 to
Make way for 30tons of cargo would
Have secure tie equipment fitted likes
What ELAL has done on there B777 will
Most probably not have this looking at the last photographs of the removed
Seats???????