First Airbus A380 to be converted as "Preighter" by Lufthansa Technik
Romain Guillot
 le 07/05/2020 , Maintenance aéronautique
The need for auxiliary freighters continues to increase. Lufthansa Technik, the MRO subsidiary of Lufthansa Group has announced that it has been awarded a technical support and engineering contract to transform an Airbus A380 into a temporary cargo aircraft. The identity of the customer has not been disclosed but seems to be Portuguese charter airline HiFly.
Contrary to what we can read here and there, it is not a P2F (Passenger-to-Freighter) conversion per se (it would take at least three to four years and would be extremely expensive) but well the development of a new Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) which will allow the Airbus Super-Jumbo to be able to temporarily accommodate goods in its main and upper decks and therefore to be able to meet the major global needs for air cargo, a trend that has increased tenfold since the suspension of regular long-haul passenger flights.
Auxiliary cargo aircraft have also recently been baptized "Preighter" (with a "P" like "Papa") within the Lufthansa group, as its CEO Carsten Spohr indicated three days ago.
Lufthansa Technik had revealed last month working hard to obtain STCs to quickly convert passenger aircraft into auxiliary freighters for all common aircraft types in order to offer them to airlines around the world.
Four of the fifteen Airbus A330-300s operated by Lufthansa have already been modified so that they could temporarily support the large fleet of Lufthansa Cargo. They initially operated under a specific approval from the German Federal Office for Civil Aviation (exemption Engineering Orders for specific tailsigns).
Lufthansa Technik announces that it has now received requests from more than forty airlines, with more than fifteen projects on different aircraft platforms being carried out.
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