When the pandemic wiped out most intercontinental travel, United was the most aggressive domestic carrier in reassigning aircrafts for dedicated cargo operations, with flying more than 13,400 passenger freighters between March 2020 and late July. Now, United Airlines is restarting cargo-only flights again, weeks after assigning all aircrafts to normal passenger operations because the delta variant has drug down travel volumes and growth expectations for the remainder of the year, reported by Freightwaves. With the uptick in traffic picking up, management decided to return all aircrafts to passenger service, with freight sharing space, and luggage in the lower hold.

In early September at a conference, United Chief Commercial Officer, Andrew Nocella said, he just released five Boeing 777-300s to their cargo division for later this year to put those aircrafts back into all-cargo markets, based on the dynamics they’ve been seeing in the marketplace today, so the aircrafts won’t be idle. Earlier this month, United updated their third-quarter revenue guidance after customer bookings and passenger yields decreased below estimates, in response to the spike in COVID cases, reported by Freightwaves.