I had a chance to talk to him about the prospects for an A330-300F and its market potential. He shared with me that a launch decision on the -330F would come later this year and would see retiring A330-300 passenger aircraft converted to medium-haul freighters around 2013 or 2014. Lenormand says that a cargo integrator has already expressed great interest in a conversion program. That quickly narrows down the possibilities for a customer: UPS, FedEx, TNT and/or DLH.
We also discussed the prospects of an A350 freighter, which he said is currently in the concept phase for a 2017/2018 entry into service, but made a specific point of discussing the challenges of mounting a cargo door on a composite fuselage compared to an aluminum fuselage. He was unsure whether or not both 787 or A350 has the potential of becoming a new-build or a converted freighter later in its life. He specifically cited managing the load paths of the composite material as the primary challenge for designing a new-build freighter out of a composite fuselage.
"It will be interesting to see how 787 gets a door on a purely composite structure. Because first, it's a major change to an airplane even to design a door on a new build airplane. It's a big change because you have all these openings there where you need to reallocate all the stress to the structure, because you generate in the structure of the plane, and in the integrity of the aircraft, a weakness. So, we have see how those are going to do for new build."
Boeing said in May 2008 that it is "ready for a 787 freighter" and requirements for such an aircraft were placed into the initial design of the aircraft. Lenormand's comment certainly illuminates what Airbus believes its own challenges are for developing an composite fuselage freighter sometime in the next decade.
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