Converting passenger planes to cargo jets costs millions [video]
Related cargo airplane factoid (and I would be glad to hear about this and more from others too):<p>One thing I learned through listening to stories about Fedex and UPS is that their fleets are (or maybe were at the time of my learning this) surprisingly old.    Or that is to say, sometimes it is surprising to learn that these leading freight companies fly planes that are several generations old, like MD-11s, or old 767s.<p>The reason for this is that these operations generally fly planes for just a few hours each night, being focused on overnight delivery, and hub-spoke swapping of packages from and to destinations.<p>And when an asset is in use for only a few hours each day, it is less important how fuel efficient or modern it is.  It just has to get the job done in a basic way, and not break that often.   A clunker is ok to be relatively inefficient because you only need to use it infrequently (compared to a passenger airplane, which by comparison is in nearly constant use to get as much revenue $ out of it and you want it to be economical in cost for that operation).<p>So these fleets have planes that are 20+ years old and feel little pressure to modernize from that point of view.<p>I remember realizing this fact when I heard that Avalon (Catalina Island) freight &#x2F; mail is (or was) served by an old DC-3 every day.   Doesn&#x27;t matter how old the plane is if it really only has to operate for 30 minutes each day.   I think that one retired though.