Boeing 777 freighter aircraft.
This week’s Flight Friday looks at cargo utilization since 2019.
The top four aircraft types by aggregated number of monthly flights account for over 60% of those monthly flights—and Boeing manufactures them all.
The two widebody aircraft in this analysis accounted for almost 40% of the total number of cargo flights in July 2025. With the 777 and the 767 still being delivered, and with ongoing conversion programs (even with a dwindling feedstock of 767-300ERs), these heavyweights are growing and are here to stay.
In the narrowbody sector, there is a transition from the legacy 757—as these slowly begin to retire—to the 737-800, courtesy of the post-COVID ramp-up of conversions.
The pandemic led to low passenger demand and high cargo demand, and lessors were looking for ways to keep their aircraft on lease by any means necessary. This led to a surge in passenger-to-freighter agreements and conversions for the 737-800.
After sixteen conversions in 2019, we observe a four-year growth period, culminating in a record 73 conversions in 2023 before the industry’s realization that the 737-800s were needed for the resurgent passenger market, resulting in a drop to 44 in 2024.
Naturally, the overall utilization is collectively up, as the in-service fleet has grown, and globally the total cargo utilization is up—again, from an increased in-service fleet. However, global utilization had dropped a little since the high of 2020/2021 but has now begun to plateau at a slightly lower level.
This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization database.
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