Freighter conversion centre Elbe Flugzeugwerke (EFW) has redelivered the first of three A330 Passenger-to-Freighter (P2F) aircraft to Air Lease, a leading global aircraft leasing company with over 800 owned, managed and on order aircraft in its fleet.
The former Alitalia A330-200P2F aircraft will be operated by Mexican airline Awesome Cargo. It is the first A330P2F aircraft to be registered in Mexico after EFW received the validated STC (V-STC) for its A330-200P2F and A330-300P2F solutions by the Agencia Federal de Aviación Civil Mexico (AFAC) in November 2024.
The freighter aircraft is equipped with a flight crew rest compartment and centre fuel tanks, allowing for both medium haul as well as long haul flights supporting routes connecting Mexico and China. The conversion freighter also utilises a powered cargo loading system suitable for extra-large or heavy cargo on 16-foot or 20-foot pallets.
READ: EFW and Confity agree multi-aircraft A330P2F conversion deal
The Mexican airline had previously operated freighter aircraft that were temporarily modified from passenger aircraft to carry cargo in the main cabin. Building on this experience with light freighters, the airline has now turned to fully converted freighter aircraft, selecting EFW’s A330-200P2F solution to support its growing air cargo operations.
“We are very grateful for Air Lease’s confidence in our A330P2F solution, the most modern converted freighter in the market,” said Jordi Boto, CEO of EFW. “This milestone redelivery marks a significant step in supporting the operator Awesome Cargo in its mission to serve key routes across Mexico, Latin America and Asia-Pacific, some of the fastest-growing regions in e-commerce. We look forward to redelivering more Airbus P2F solutions which combine sustainability with efficiency to meet the fleet needs of our lessor and operator customers.”
The aircraft is EFW’s number 60 Airbus widebody freighter of the new conversion programme provided to the market. The EFW A330P2F programme comes in two variants – the A330-200P2F and the A330-300P2F. The A330-200P2F can carry a gross payload of up to 60 tons for over 7,700 km, while the A330-300P2F offers a gross payload of up to 62 tons and a containerised volume of up to ~18,581ft3 (~526m3), with up to 23% more cargo volume than other freighter aircraft in the same class.
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