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Freighter Aircraft Guide

Every cargo aircraft in Headwinds compared: payload, range, lease cost and fuel burn. Build a profitable cargo network alongside your passenger airline.

By the Headwinds team · Last updated October 29, 2026

Cargo is a different business with different rules. Freighters fly payload, not passengers: no catering, no loyalty points, no reputation dance — just tonnes, lanes, and yield. A well-built cargo network is steady, high-margin income that keeps earning even when passenger demand wobbles.

Because these aircraft carry no seats, the comparison metric changes: what matters is payload tonnes against trip cost over the lanes you actually fly. Small feeders move parcels into your hub; big intercontinental freighters move serious tonnage between major economies.

How to choose

Start small. A regional freighter on a short, proven lane teaches you cargo pricing at minimal risk. Converted passenger jets (BCF/P2F types) are the mid-market value play — cheap to lease, decent payload. Purpose-built giants like the 747F only pay off on dense long-haul trade lanes with tonnage to fill them, but when they work, nothing else comes close.

All 32 aircraft at a glance

Figures are the game's actual values. Fuel cost assumes the base fuel price of $1.45/litre — the live market price in your save drifts between roughly half and nearly double that, which is why fuel hedging matters.

A simpler fight than passengers

Everything painful about multiplayer happens in the passenger demand split. Two airlines meet on a city pair, and the model divides travellers between them on fares, frequency, quality and reputation — which means a rival with a deeper treasury can make a market you built unprofitable simply by deciding to. Cargo is contested too, but far more narrowly. When two airlines run freighters on the same lane — and a lane is the whole metro pair, so Newark–Heathrow and JFK–Heathrow draw on the same New York–London freight — the tonnage splits on capacity and yield alone. There is no loyalty programme to out-spend, no brand to out-advertise, and no frequency war. A lane only you serve keeps its whole pool.

That makes a cargo network the most dependable income in a Headwinds world, and its value is highest at exactly the moment your passenger business is under attack. A rival who wants your freight has to bring real tonnage onto the same lane and price against you, which is an expensive and visible way to fight. An airline funding a frequency fight out of steady cargo revenue can outlast a rival funding the same fight out of the market they are fighting for.

Cash for the auctions

In worlds created with gate scarcity enabled, the way you grow at a desirable airport is by winning gates at sealed-bid auction. Bidding opens at week 40 and settles at the year tick; the highest bids win at their bid price, ties broken at random. There is no second chance until the following year, and the airline that turns up with more cash simply gets the slots.

Cargo revenue is unusually well suited to funding that. It is steady, it is uncorrelated with whatever your passenger rivals are doing to your yields, and it doesn't require you to signal anything about your intentions in the months beforehand. A carrier quietly running freighters through the year and bidding hard in week 40 is a much harder opponent than one whose war chest depends on the routes being contested.

Gates remain use-it-or-lose-it — 24 idle weeks forfeits them and locks you out for another 24. Cargo services count. A freighter rotation is a legitimate way to keep a claim alive at an airport your passenger network hasn't reached yet.

Freighters ride your passenger certification

This is the detail that decides most cargo fleet choices in Headwinds, and it is easy to miss. Jet bases — the hangars that cut what a check or a breakdown costs and how long the airframe is stuck — are certified by aircraft family, and a freighter is covered by its passenger family's certification. If your maintenance network already covers the 767, a 767 freighter arrives fully supported on day one. If you buy into a family your airline has no other reason to touch, you are funding a whole new certification, or flying uncovered.

So the right cargo aircraft is very often the freighter variant of something you already operate, even when a different type looks marginally better in the tonne-kilometre column below. The maintenance saving is real money every week; the efficiency gap usually isn't. Where you have no relevant family at all, pick the one whose passenger side you can imagine wanting later, and get two uses out of the certification.

Visible, but rarely provocative

Rival profiles show every player's route map, hubs, fleet by type and week-by-week moves — and that includes the cargo map: each freight lane, its weekly frequency and the yield you charge on it. Nothing about a cargo network is hidden. What differs is the reaction it draws. A widebody order announces a long-haul passenger plan and invites somebody to get there first; a freighter order says much less until its lanes open, and a rival can only contest those lanes by flying freighters of their own on the same pairs.

Most don't, and that is worth something. Building cargo rarely provokes the pre-emptive moves a passenger build-up does, and a cargo-funded airline's real strength is easy to underestimate from the outside — though not by the standings, which rank on average weekly net profit over the last 52 weeks and count freight profit exactly as they count passenger profit. If you want to grow without inviting company, this is the quiet way to do it — just price your lanes knowing everyone can read the number.

Where the risk actually sits

Two cautions. First, big intercontinental freighters carry the same problem as big passenger jets: mechanical failures cost a share of the airframe's purchase price, scaled by an age curve reaching roughly triple at twenty years and five and a half at thirty, and a percentage of a very expensive aircraft is a very expensive week. Older freighters are the classic value play and the classic way to get hurt — base them, or keep a same-type standby at the hub, because reserve cover only works type-for-type.

Second, cargo is steady, not free. Lanes still need real tonnage at both ends, and a freighter flying half-empty loses money as reliably as any passenger aircraft. Small feeders moving parcels into your hub are the low-risk entry; scale up only once a lane has proven itself. The route economics guide covers the underlying maths, and fleet planning covers when a cargo arm is worth starting at all.

Type-by-type notes