747 Freighters: why Anchorage?

[Will]

I can usually tell by the sound when a 747 flies over the house on its way to O'Hare. When I hear one, I pull out my Flightradar24 app (which is set to filter out all but 747s), and I can see what the aircraft is and where it's coming from.

These days, almost all the 747s are cargo, and they're all coming from Anchorage. (Well, maybe not all, but most.) The flights are originating in Anchorage even if the carrier is Asian.

I'm guessing these are flights that start in Asia, land in Anchorage, and then continue on to Chicago. My question for the group is why they stop in Anchorage.

Here's my guess: they want to depart with less fuel from their starting airport in Asia, so they can carry more cargo. Since cargo (unlike your average passenger) doesn't care about layovers, the operators would rather make more money by carrying more payload, as opposed to flying direct and leaving Asia with enough fuel to go non-stop.

Am I missing something, or is that it?

[United744]

I think that's pretty much it! Anchorage is in a very strategic location, being on the entry/exit corridors for Pacific routes over the northern side of the planet.

A lot of traffic between Asia and the Northern USA/Canada travel up over the northern Pacific along those routes, and end up pointing straight at Anchorage on the exit.

It also happens that it follows closely the required GC tracks, whereas the "direct" route straight across the ocean is actually further than it looks (but I'm sure you knew that  ).

If you look at the older freighters, they just about had the range to fly Narita/Hong Kong to Anchorage at max weight and make Anchorage for fuel.

[andmiz]

This video explains some of the fascinating history behind PANC and is worth a look.  https://youtu.be/jdNDYBt9e_U

From a perspective in Asia, and the way the 747-8F economics (in particular) have been designed, we can take off at MTOW out of Hong Kong and land at MLW into Anchorage; this maximises our useful cargo uplift.  In other words, the fuel required to fly from HKG-ANC at max weight, is the difference between MTOW and MLW.  We then do a tech stop (refuel & crew replacement) and continue through to the rest of North America with the cargo. 

As United744 said above too, the great circle route is very close to being overhead Anchorage for many East Coast destinations to Asia. 

Dozens of airlines overnight in Anchorage, and for us, we have upwards of 40 crew per night overnighting there. 

[andrej]

Dozens of airlines overnight in Anchorage, and for us, we have upwards of 40 crew per night overnighting there.

Very interesting topic! Following your colleagues on the Instagram (Pilot_Obet and FlywithEva), one quickly understand the importance of ANC as cargo hub. Other Asian and US cargo operators (such as EVA, China Airlines, Atlas) also take advantage of this hub.

It is interesting to see, that some pilots would do HKG-ANC rotation (and maybe a few), and some continue to MIA, LAX, ATL, and Mexico.

How is it with your B744FERs? How far are MLW are you, when you take off at MTOW? I presume that B748F is superior (payload wise), but do they similar characteristics? (I would assume so, providing similar fuel consumption of ~10T per hour).

Best!

[Mariano]

I recall once reading an article about this, and it pointed to Alaska's then low taxes or no taxes on jet fuel (can't remember which).

Perhaps this, added to the great circle and weight advantages mentioned above, contributed to ANC being so popular with freighters.

Best regards,

Mariano

[Ton van Bochove]

For Cargolux Aguadilla, Puerto Rico has the same function: fully loaded with cargo and just enough fuel from Bogota (8500 feet) and refueling at Puerto Rico for the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

[Will]

Interesting. I did not know about Puerto Rico.

[United744]

I need to try that one!

[andmiz]

As far as I know Anchorage has recently started charging sales tax on jet fuel.

How is it with your B744FERs? How far are MLW are you, when you take off at MTOW? I presume that B748F is superior (payload wise), but do they similar characteristics?

The heaviest flight I can find in the last few months is about 390t (the ERF's rarely fly to North America).  It takes about 100t of fuel to get to Anchorage, so landed at about 290t.  While the fuel burn for weight increase isn't quite linear, even with those figure extrapolated you can expect that you need to be a few tonne below MTOW to land at MLW.  Not a big difference though to the 747-8F; the main thing is that the -8F hauls another 35 tonne of payload for a similar fuel load. 

[Ton van Bochove]

It is all about fuel

https://www.globalair.com/airport/fuelmap.aspx?aptcode=panc&av=pu&rad=50&FacType=Airport&rwy=any

and make a comparison with KJFK

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Something tells me that large fuel guzzlers, like airframe buyers, are not paying list price.

[DougSnow]

Plus for us and I am sure our colleagues who fly brown airplanes, we do not want to overnight in China, or HK right now if we can avoid it, because of the never ending changes to the Covid crew quarantine protocols. One airport in China required crewemembers to do the walkaround in a full hazmat suit!!!

We've even added stops in Japan or AK on flights that were, pre covid, a nonstop from China/SE Asia to the US. We'll now have a crew do a Japan-China-Japan turnaround, then a new crew will fly Japan-US; before the bug for the same transpacific flight a crew would do Japan-China layover, and a new crew would fly the China US Nonstop after a China layover.  Plus for the shorter leg from SE Asia to ANC, I need fewer crew members.

Most of the larger network airlines have fuel admin groups whose sole purpose in life is to monitor fuel availability and set the fuel prices in the flight planning system, if FPS says tanker I tanker.  As fuel prices fluctuate, what was a tankering city pair one week, may not be this week.

[Will]

Interesting (but not surprising) that the route and schedule is so beholden to the price of fuel. You input the cost of fuel here, the cost of fuel there, landing fees, headwinds, and everything else and the computer gives you a cheapest route, best CI, and optimum number of enroute stops. Even pretty robust flight planning packages for the sim world (e.g. PFPX) probably don't scratch the surface in terms of what it would take to maximize a company's profits on a particular cargo contract.

[DougSnow]

Interesting (but not surprising) that the route and schedule is so beholden to the price of fuel. You input the cost of fuel here, the cost of fuel there, landing fees, headwinds, and everything else and the computer gives you a cheapest route, best CI,

Overflight fees go into that mix too.  If I can avoid flying thru very expensive airspace, even if it adds flight time, I'll do it.  For example, on an ORDNRT 777F, will cost say $120000 (for illustration purposes only) to operate the flight, time of crew, fuel burn, overflights, everything. BUT, if I can reduce the cost to operate to 100000 by not overflying certain airspace, even if it adds flight time (as long as I am not overblock inbound), I just might do it.

Northern hemisphere winter is bad as going west out of PANC I'll have to fly thru Russian and Chinese airspace as the winter Japanese jet stream can get really bad when flying westbound, and neither of those countries are cheap.

A min time flight plan is good, but min cost is better.

[Will]

Doug, do you ever personally get feedback about the difference between a predicted trip cost and the actual trip cost? Do you have a quality department that looks over your shoulder to see if you're making the "right" decisions for the bean counters? Do you get feedback about your planning decisions compared to other dispatchers' decisions on similar routes?

I'm just curious, because we hear about the aircraft reporting various exceedances that the pilots might make in flight, and the ways that the chief pilot might use "big data" to improve line operations. If all of that historical performance data is just sitting there, I imagine someone (or some algorithm) would be looking at it. After all, shareholder value and all that.

[DougSnow]

Yeah, management gets reports on payload accuracy (e.g., if I just click the Max Payload button all the time and let the FPS generate a max ZFW flight plan because I am trying to find the end of the internet, and see a phone call from a crew as a failure) instead of working with the departure station on what they really expect to load, and carry all that extra fuel that will not get burned, yeah, repeatedly that could be a discussion.

My airline has 50 international dispatchers (and twice that number of domestic dispatchers), with 50 different ways of doing things.  We have a manual that defines the minimum policy; as long as policy is being met, as long as no regs are being violated, its hard to say you could've done better. A lot of 121 dispatching is judgment, instead of just monkey-see monkey-click rote compliance. On the domestic side, there may be only one set of eyes that work a flight from doing the initial flight plan, and flight follow it to destination.

An international trip can have 3 or more sets of eyes looking at that flight plan. I have worked up a long haul 16 hour flight, turned it over at the end of my shift, gone home and slept or whatever, gone back in to the control center the next day and caught the flight I released yesterday, at top of descent.  In a way with all those eyes, its a self policing  problem.