Brussels Airlines Cancels All Flights For A Month

Lh group is now apparently looking into their 747 fleet to increase cargo capacity if I understood Spohrs comment correctly.
Are there any insights on how this would work?
Thanks

@john:
This may be a silly question but is there a quick way to convert a 747 into cargo usage short of doing a full conversion? I.e., removing the seats and adding the floor structure to fit cargo. Obviously the regular containers wouldn't fit through the passenger doors and there wouldn't be the front loading capacity but may be small containers can be quickly designed that fit through the passenger doors?

I think we're going to see a wave of aircraft type retirements (e.g., 747s, 767s) akin to 9-11 when older generation 747s,DC10s, were swiftly retired.

A pattern is developing which follows nature. Expand,expand but when things happen circle the wagons and protect your own. Thus LH shuts down subsidiaries and Amazon now is stopping the outside sellers. The new world is following the motto, "use them while you can, then dump them".

I guess LH and LX will follow soon.

@John @at
They can just fill the cargo/baggage compartment and stack lighter boxes on the seat. Medical supplies don't take that much space. At this moment, even flying with a full lower deck and empty cabin makes money, as cargo capacity is in high demand. All the passenger routes that used to carry a lot of cargo is suspended.

Repatriation not reparation

@John
Air Cargo prices have increased by the factor 3.5x in the last 2 days alone. And supply is very limited as most passenger airplanes who also have some under-floor capacity besides the baggage are grounded right now.
Furthermore the other transport modes such as rail, trucks and cargo ships are in gridlock right now as most intemodal containers are not at the rigth place. Therefore the quick air freight is the only way to preserver supply chains at least to some degree.

All this combined means that Lufthansa is easily profitable selling just the underfloor cargo capacity of their passenger planes and having the cabin itself completely empty.

I am a small importer with years of small quantity importing. The mathematics of flying passenger jets involves huge revenue of freight. It is so important that I have seen freight unloaded before passenger luggage!
I can not imagine passenger aircraft will ever fly with boxes on seats, they are loose, move and the shifting can be an emergency situation in massive turbulence.

It's quite funny everyody is speaking about an "extraordinarily high demand in air cargo" right now. Of course temporarily the demand will increase - due to the fact passenger flights are mostly cancelled and other means of transport have been limited too.

But in the next weeks? Being from the industry we already now experience a huge decline in demand. Two big German companies (more than 150,000 employees in Germany combined) already announced to halt production until further notice. And this is just the beginning.

Still everybody reporting airfreight will profit so much from this - quite a farce.

Can I go on another airline with my Air Brussels ticket?

If we are really lucky this temporary grounding of Brussels Airlines will become permanent and it will be the back of Europe's most sick and confused carrier.