HAWK21M wrote:

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Welcome.

Personally I feel it would be B767 Freighters converted by Boeing.As the Initial tonnage pointed to that.But Time will tell.

I don't have hope on Flyington Freighters as its does not seem to realistic.How can they afford the B777 Freighter type.Wheres the Cash.

regds

MEL

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B763 is Too large an aircraft for domestic freight. B762 is pretty old and no more in production and very few available for conversion. There aren't many B767 engineers in India, few from BA, Delta etc and Operating crew is 'Shunye' (zero), so everything needs to be built up from scratch. This will add to the costs and if you had to compare it to say A310 of which there are plenty of Pilots and Engineers apart from the heavy maintenance facility and simulators, it does look attractive, bearing in mind maintenance and wages take up nearly 30% of operating cost.

Compared to the approx 50T that a B767 can carry against the 40T for a A310 for an extra 10T per sector you have to spread the cost of investing in whole new facilities and equipment. Having said that this can be reduced thru economies of scale i.e. Dozens of aircrafts. Another factor to take into consideration is the compatibilty of the containers on A310/A300 with the B747/MD-11, as B767 is not a truly wide-body aircraft the container are a odd size. And if you as a freight operator have long haul B747/MD-11 feeding into short and medium haul B767 there is the additional cost of repackaging/reloading, fortunately this is not required on A310/A300, containers can be rolled off and rolled on.

B737 is another good domestic work horse, with its reliability for short hops this will work well with Reliances plans for a rural retail boom. Basically they plan to have these so called logistic hubs based in small towns connecting say a 100 villages and the nearest airport that can take a B737 would be ideal for this sort of hub and spoke network feeding into larger metros. And then there are dime a dozen crew and engineers available for this type ( at the right price).

Regards Flyington you could be right, but bear in mind that there is a huge AMD chip factory that has come up in Hyderabad, you never know they probably have a deal to transport these chips abroad. And if you have a look TN there is Motorola, Nokia apart from the delphis of the auto industry and in BLR & HYD you have scores of pharmas breeding all sorts of stuff that need transportation by air. If they have got the business then why not, probably the parent group already has a freight forwarding subsidary and now plans to have the haulage too. Its called disintermediation in economics, very common in logistics industry.

 

JumboJet wrote:

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.......i just dont know how much to trust them.....

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Majority of India shared the same feeling for long, looking at their forays into the sectors boosting growth in India and the efficiency they have bourght to these sectors i.e. Petroleum refining/exploration, Power generation/distribution and telecom. I feel you have to give the devil its due.

Aseem wrote:

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is it possible that these large freighters bring economics of scale to domestic freight sector?  If you remember, pretty much the same apprehensions were aired when Volvo trucks started rolling in India.  Moreover, I feel that rail and air freight traffic is as different as passenger traffic, although there maybe slight overlap.

rgds

VT-ASJ

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Its the cost of operations that will have to be transferred to the freight i.e. B767 can carry x2 the freight of a B737, at the same time the price of the equipment and the cost of operating a B767 is more than x2 B737.

You have to remember the law of diminishing returns while looking for economies of scale.

Here in the case of India you have to look at the distribution of markets, because of the equal spread around the country a B737 can be operated to a non-metro airport too however the B767 could be restricted due infrastructure constraints. And due its size B737 can carry freight both ways rather than come half empty in the case of a B767.

 

COUGAR wrote:

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Are reliance looking to get into the domestic freight business?

I remember reading a report in a Business India about a proposal to link a Middle-eastern city (Dubai??) and Kathmandu thru BOM. Is this a rehash of that or r they planning to do BOM-DEL-MAA-BOM shuttles?

If it is the former then the widebodies make sense?

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Many of the ME airlines operating A330s to India manage to offset their cost carrying payload instead of pax. If you had to use the logic that these aircraft types can carry a payload of upto 20T on a half-empty cabin, The B737 seems to be a optimal aircraft for this. Most of the freight transported by air between India and the ME comes under the Agro-Food industry. These industries are again spreadout in India not limited to metros. For example same day meat could be exported from Lucknow, Nagpur and Calicut on a P2P anywhere in the ME avoiding expensive hub airports. 

What do you bring on the inbound leg, industrial products to support the SEZ coming up close to these cities, JIT ? If there is a large demand for freight both ways than as you'll suggest WB could be the way. IMO, WB would be more East bound to the booming industrial centres in Asia and to EU if west bound.

 

Where does S2 operate the 767 currently?

Decision on the model selection has to be based on many factors including load available,Maintenance staff availability to name a few.Apart from Costs.

regds

MEL

Reliance recently i guess opened up a fresh food store in HYD or BLR also. What actually seems to be the question is how do they intend to keep the cost factor in control with using freighters to transport perishables..

There are some issues which need to be looked into:

Cost
The whether the particular airport can handle the freighters they intend to use..

With shipping lines providing fixed sailing schedules and refer containers easily available which keeps such consignments on hot load i still think transporting perishables overseas thru air would be an expensive proposition..