Air Transport Services Group, a major lessor and operator of freighter aircraft, expects to deliver its first Airbus A330-300 converted freighter this month to Turkey-based ULS Airlines Cargo and a second one in April, an industry source close to the company said.
The Airbus A330-300 cargo jets are much larger than the three A310 converted freighters ULS Airlines Cargo currently operates from Istanbul Airport.
Air Transport Services Group (NASDAQ: ATSG) said in Tuesday’s fourth-quarter earnings report that it plans to place its first four Airbus A330-300 converted freighters with customers this year after historically relying on the Boeing 767 as its platform of choice. The first two A330 freighter conversions are expected to be completed in March, ATSG added in its annual report.
The A330’s introduction has slipped several months for undisclosed reasons. Industry publication Cargo Facts in March 2024 first reported ULS Airlines Cargo as the launch customer for ATSG’s A330 lease program and said then the planes would join the fleet last August. That month, Wilmington, Ohio-based ATSG said two A330s were nearly finished undergoing conversion by Airbus aftermarket services affiliate Elbe Flugzeugwerke GmbH and would be delivered in late 2024. EFW accepted ATSG’s first A330 passenger plane at one of its conversion facilities in October 2023.
FreightWaves previously reported that EFW was months behind schedule delivering A330 passenger-to-freighter conversions to Amazon Air and South America’s Avianca because of program mismanagement that compounded supply chain challenges across the aerospace sector.
An ATSG spokesperson didn’t respond to an email query seeking details about the A330’s conversion and delivery schedule.
ATSG intends to acquire and convert 29 A330s for cargo to diversify its midsize aircraft offering as the availability of used 767 passenger aircraft begins to dry up, but will take longer to do so after the company in 2023 decided to scale back capital expenditures in favor of cash flow and shareholder returns.
The company several years ago formed a joint venture to design a conversion for Airbus A321 into a cargo configuration, but so far has had difficulty leasing them because of overcapacity in the global narrowbody freighter fleet, a slowdown in regional parcel demand and competition from the Boeing 737-800. There are three A321s in service and five additional conversions in storage that ATSG said it expects to lease this year.
Last month, stockholders voted to approve the proposed merger with Stonepeak, an alternative investment firm specializing in infrastructure and real assets. The company is working to obtain approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation and hopes to complete the transaction in the first half of the year, according to quarterly results published on Tuesday.
