American Airlines plans to fly 1000+ cargo-only flights in September

After returning to all-cargo operations in March, American Airlines will fly more than 1,000 cargo-only flights to 32 destinations across the US, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia in September. The airline re-launched cargo-only flights in March, with 20 strategic flights to two key destinations. Since being reintroduced, American’s cargo-only flights, which hadn’t been operated in more than 35 years, have moved more than 45 million pounds of cargo around the world.”
“We didn’t have a playbook. We’d never done this before,” said Maulin Vakil, American’s director of cargo revenue at the time. “We began to explore how much cargo we could take if we couldn’t transport passengers.”
After exploring options, the group began planning a cargo-only flight from Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) to Frankfurt (FRA) scheduled to take off on March 20.
The airline expanded its cargo-only flights to Hong Kong (HKG), Shanghai (PVG), Beijing (PEK) and Seoul (ICN). “We essentially started our own little airline,” said Tom Howard, Manager at American’s integrated operations center. “We had to build this entire out and coordinate how it flows with our scheduled passenger service because, well, we’re a passenger airline.”
This September, more than 1,000 scheduled cargo-only flights will be accompanied by more than 1,200 passenger flights also offering cargo services.