Aircraft
Passenger Airplanes Serve Vital Cargo Links During Pandemic
The IATA detailed various levels of regulation for using passenger airplanes as freighters.
Air Canada has finished removing the seats from two of three Boeing 777-300s specifically to fly medical supplies from China. (Photo: Flickr: Creative Commons (BY) by Olivier CABARET)
Air Canada has finished removing the seats from two of three Boeing 777-300s specifically to fly medical supplies from China. (Photo: Flickr: Creative Commons (BY) by Olivier CABARET)

Even as airline passenger traffic falls to a small fraction of its 2019 levels due to the Covid-19 pandemic, air cargo transport remains vital to keeping the world’s economic engine from completely stalling. In fact, air freight demand has hardly fallen with the need for coronavirus-related supplies such as medical equipment and food shipments to places where processing plant closures have created a shortage, for example. So, while the majority of passenger airplanes sit grounded amid travel restrictions and the resulting collapse in travel demand, there remains a need for the cargo capacity that normally resides in the bellies of those machines.