ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the operating costs of carrying cargo by air. These can be divided into flight or aircraft operating costs, handling and marketing costs and overheads. The chapter examines the operating costs of those airlines that operate only freighters, including marketing costs and overheads. It explores the freighter aircraft operating costs by type of aircraft. The operating costs of all-cargo airlines are published in more or less detail in the annual reports of some of all-cargo carriers, by ICAO and some country aviation authorities. An all-cargo airline that has published consistent financial and operating data over a long period of time is Cargolux. Its fleet in 2008 consisted entirely of B747-400Fs, some of which were wet leased from other carriers. Atlantic is a UK mail carrier and unit costs tend to be very high when they cannot be spread over longer distances or aircraft of an economic size.
