Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with&nbsp;New Jersey Monthly&nbsp;magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for&nbsp;Aviation International News&nbsp;in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.

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Gregory Polek

More evidence of an increasingly active market for passenger-to-freighter conversions surfaced Friday in the form of a firm agreement by Amazon Air to lease 10 A330-300P2F freighters from commercial aviation finance company Altavair. Hawaiian Airlines has agreed to begin operating the aircraft—now undergoing conversion by Airbus-ST Aerospace joint venture Elbe Flugzeugwerke (EFW)—for Amazon upon first delivery, scheduled for late 2023. Hawaiian Airlines began operating A330-200 passenger jets in 2010 and now flies 24 of the Airbus widebodies.

 


Although EFW also offers conversions of A330-200s, Airbus considers the longer-fuselage A330-300P2F particularly suited for integrators and express carriers because of its high volumetric payload capability with lower-density cargo.&nbsp;

 


"The endorsement of our freighters by Amazon speaks volumes about the market value of the A330 and the position Airbus widebodies are gaining in the cargo market,” said Christian Scherer, Airbus chief commercial officer and head of Airbus International.

 


Launched in 2010 at the Singapore Airshow, the A330P2F program delivered the first example—an A330-300P2F—in 2017 to DHL, which initially deployed the aircraft in its Asia-Pacific network.

 


Since the A330’s service entry in 1994, airlines have ordered more than 1,700 of the widebodies and Airbus has delivered more than 1,500, providing a large source of aircraft to support P2F conversions for many years, according to the European airframer. 
 
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