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Freighter Aircraft Guide
Every cargo aircraft in Tailwinds compared: payload, range, lease cost and fuel burn. Build a profitable cargo network alongside your passenger airline.
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 24 aircraft at a glance
Figures are the game's actual values. Fuel cost assumes the base fuel price of $1.20/litre — the live market price in your save drifts between roughly half and nearly double that, which is why fuel hedging matters.
| Aircraft | Payload | Range | Cruise | Lease/wk | Price | Fuel/100km | Fuel/tonne-km | Fuel rank | Lease/tonne |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Curtiss C-46 Commando | 6.8 t | 1,900 km | 300 km/h | $4K | $1.4M | 115 L | 24.5¢ | 18 / 24 | $515 |
| ATR 72-600F | 9 t | 1,500 km | 510 km/h | $32K | $16M | 119 L | 19.1¢ | 11 / 24 | $3,556 |
| Embraer E190F | 13 t | 4,500 km | 800 km/h | $55K | $23M | 285 L | 31.8¢ | 22 / 24 | $4,231 |
| Boeing 737-300F | 18 t | 3,400 km | 800 km/h | $33K | $13M | 365 L | 29.4¢ | 20 / 24 | $1,833 |
| Boeing 737-400F | 20 t | 3,500 km | 800 km/h | $38K | $15M | 400 L | 29.0¢ | 19 / 24 | $1,900 |
| Antonov An-12 | 20 t | 3,600 km | 550 km/h | $18K | $7M | 504 L | 36.5¢ | 24 / 24 | $900 |
| Boeing 737-800BCF | 23 t | 3,750 km | 830 km/h | $72K | $30M | 381 L | 24.0¢ | 16 / 24 | $3,130 |
| Boeing 727-200F | 26 t | 3,500 km | 830 km/h | $19K | $7.5M | 600 L | 33.5¢ | 23 / 24 | $731 |
| Airbus A321P2F | 28 t | 4,300 km | 830 km/h | $101K | $42M | 290 L | 15.0¢ | 5 / 24 | $3,607 |
| Boeing 757-200PF | 39 t | 5,800 km | 850 km/h | $60K | $24M | 495 L | 18.4¢ | 10 / 24 | $1,538 |
| Boeing 767-200SF | 42 t | 6,000 km | 855 km/h | $65K | $26M | 640 L | 22.1¢ | 14 / 24 | $1,548 |
| Douglas DC-8-73F | 48 t | 7,400 km | 850 km/h | $38K | $15M | 1026 L | 31.0¢ | 21 / 24 | $792 |
| Boeing 767-300F | 52 t | 6,025 km | 855 km/h | $194K | $96M | 594 L | 16.6¢ | 7 / 24 | $3,731 |
| Airbus A300-600F | 54 t | 7,400 km | 840 km/h | $83K | $33M | 790 L | 21.2¢ | 13 / 24 | $1,537 |
| Airbus A330-200F | 70 t | 7,400 km | 870 km/h | $232K | $115M | 625 L | 12.9¢ | 4 / 24 | $3,314 |
| McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30F | 78 t | 5,900 km | 870 km/h | $43K | $17M | 1300 L | 24.2¢ | 17 / 24 | $551 |
| McDonnell Douglas MD-11F | 91 t | 7,300 km | 870 km/h | $110K | $44M | 1080 L | 17.2¢ | 8 / 24 | $1,209 |
| Boeing 777F | 102 t | 9,200 km | 890 km/h | $319K | $158M | 781 L | 11.1¢ | 3 / 24 | $3,127 |
| Airbus A350F | 109 t | 8,700 km | 900 km/h | $353K | $175M | 720 L | 9.6¢ | 1 / 24 | $3,239 |
| Boeing 747-400F | 112 t | 8,230 km | 900 km/h | $138K | $55M | 1560 L | 20.2¢ | 12 / 24 | $1,232 |
| Boeing 777-8F | 112 t | 8,200 km | 890 km/h | $343K | $170M | 770 L | 10.0¢ | 2 / 24 | $3,063 |
| Antonov An-124-100 Ruslan | 120 t | 5,400 km | 780 km/h | $236K | $98M | 1900 L | 23.0¢ | 15 / 24 | $1,967 |
| Boeing 747-8F | 137 t | 8,130 km | 900 km/h | $353K | $175M | 1480 L | 15.7¢ | 6 / 24 | $2,577 |
| Antonov An-225 Mriya | 250 t | 4,000 km | 750 km/h | $409K | $170M | 3100 L | 18.0¢ | 9 / 24 | $1,636 |
Six freighters worth building a cargo network on
Twenty-three freighters are on offer and most of them will quietly ruin you. What follows is six that will not, chosen to cover the whole arc: a first aircraft you can afford to be wrong with, a narrowbody step up, a mid-size backbone, the long-haul workhorse, the efficiency leader worth growing into, and one that looks cheapest of all and is nothing of the kind.
ATR 72-600F — the low-risk starter and short-strip specialist
Nine tonnes sounds like nothing until you price it. The 72-600F leases for $32,000 a week and bills $14,000 in maintenance — the only freighter here whose maintenance is under half its lease, and the only one whose combined weekly fixed cost stays under $50,000. That $46,000 is your entire downside. Open a lane, set a rate, watch what fills; if you have priced it badly you have lost a rounding error rather than a quarter. At 19.1 cents per tonne-kilometre it is also the most fuel-efficient small freighter in the game — the 737-300F sits at 33.0, the An-12 at 36.5 — so a mispriced ATR route bleeds slowly enough that you can fix it.
Its other job is access. 1,500 kilometres is genuinely short, but 4,400 feet of runway is shorter than anything else can manage: the E190F needs 6,200, the 737-400F 6,400. That makes the ATR your only route into a whole tier of small regional fields, and those lanes stay thin and uncontested because the AI carriers cannot reach them either. Feed them into a larger airport you already serve and the little aircraft stops being a curiosity and becomes the first leg of a network. Lease before you buy: at $16M the purchase is affordable early, but you want the option to walk away from a lane that will not fill.
Airbus A321P2F — the narrowbody workhorse
Once you know what a tonne-kilometre is worth on your own map, the A321P2F is the obvious second step. It moves 28 tonnes across 4,300 kilometres at 15.0 cents per tonne-kilometre, fifth on the whole efficiency table and comfortably the best narrowbody freighter available. Set it beside the 737-800BCF, which leases for $29,000 a week less: the Boeing carries 23 tonnes on 381 litres, the Airbus 28 tonnes on 290. You are paying more per week for five extra tonnes and a quarter less fuel, and that trade repays itself on any sector long enough to be worth flying.
Fixed costs land at $165,000 a week with maintenance included, close to $5,900 per tonne of payload, and 6,400 feet of runway keeps nearly every mainline airport open to you. What to resist is the E190F, which looks like the same idea for $46,000 a week less: it hauls 13 tonnes on 285 litres, almost an A321's fuel bill for under half an A321's payload, and lands at 31.8 cents per tonne-kilometre. Payload per litre is the number that compounds week after week on a cargo network, and the route economics behind that are worth reading before you sign anything.
Boeing 767-300F — the mid-size backbone
There is a wide gap between 28 tonnes and 100, and the 767-300F fills it better than anything else on the board. 52 tonnes, 6,025 kilometres and 16.6 cents per tonne-kilometre buy you a serious mid-haul aircraft that still fits a 9,000-foot runway, and it is the type most real express networks are built around for exactly that reason. Fixed costs run to $339,000 a week including maintenance, roughly $6,500 per payload tonne. That premium is the price of flying a modern airframe rather than a used one, and it is worth paying.
The comparison to run is the A300-600F, which offers two more tonnes for $111,000 a week less in lease. Now price the fuel: on a full-payload 6,000-kilometre sector the 767 burns $51,800 at base price and the A300 burns $68,700, so seven sectors a week wipes the lease saving out completely. The A300 also arrives around twelve years old, already billing $159,000 in weekly maintenance against the 767's $145,000, with age-scaled mechanical failures the newer aircraft does not carry. Then remember that the fuel market drifts to nearly double $1.20. When it does, the fuel gap doubles with it and the lease gap does not move at all.
Boeing 777F — the long-haul engine room
Nothing else here moves long-haul volume this cheaply. 102 tonnes, 11.1 cents per tonne-kilometre, and 9,200 kilometres of range — the longest of any freighter in the game. Lease and maintenance together come to $539,000 a week, which reads as terrifying until you divide by payload: $5,284 per tonne, cheaper per tonne than the 767-300F at $6,500 and cheaper than the A321P2F at $5,900. Scale genuinely works in your favour in cargo, provided you have the demand to fill the hold.
Range is the real purchase. 9,200 kilometres opens transpacific and transatlantic lanes that nothing below the A330-200F can reach at all, and long sectors are where efficiency compounds hardest. Put it against a 747-400F on an 8,000-kilometre run: the older Boeing carries ten more tonnes but burns $181,000 of fuel to the 777F's $90,600, and bills $336,000 a week in maintenance against $220,000. You need 10,200 feet of runway, so build around airports that have it — as much a hub strategy decision as a fleet one. Buying is no shortcut: $158M is about 495 weeks of lease, and that ratio holds broadly across the fleet, so lease until a lane has proved itself.
Airbus A350F — the efficiency leader worth growing into
At 9.6 cents per tonne-kilometre the A350F is the most efficient freighter in the game, and the margin over the field is real: the 777-8F sits at 10.0, the 777F at 11.1, the 747-8F at 15.7. It lifts 109 tonnes across 8,700 kilometres for $353,000 a week plus $250,000 in maintenance. Fly it against a 777F on an 8,000-kilometre sector with the same 102 tonnes aboard and it saves $12,240 in fuel per one-way trip at base price. Five trips a week is $61,000, almost exactly the $64,000 weekly gap in fixed costs — so at $1.20 the two are level, and every cent above that tips the argument to Airbus.
The quieter advantage is the runway. 8,600 feet is the shortest requirement of any aircraft over 100 tonnes here, where the 777F and 747-8F both demand 10,200, so the A350F can work hubs the other heavies cannot touch, and secondary airports are precisely where the AI carriers are thinnest. You give up 500 kilometres of range, so leave the very longest lanes to the 777F and run this on dense 6,000-to-8,000-kilometre corridors where the saving repeats every single week. This is not a first freighter, or a fifth. It is what you grow into once fuel has spiked often enough to hurt.
McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30F — the trap you will be offered first
Look at the DC-10-30F's lease line and it reads like an error in your favour: 78 tonnes for $43,000 a week, less than a 737-800BCF costs. The maintenance line is $234,000, five and a half times the lease and the worst ratio of any aircraft in the game. Combined fixed cost is $277,000 a week before a single litre of fuel, and the fuel is where it truly unravels. On a 5,900-kilometre sector at full load it burns $111,400 at base price; a 777F carrying the same 78 tonnes the same distance burns $51,100. Ten sectors a week and the bargain has spent $600,000 more than the aircraft it was meant to undercut.
That pattern repeats right through the bargain bin, and it is almost always a delivery-age story. The 727-200F leases for $19,000 and bills $78,000; the DC-8-73F leases for $38,000 and bills $159,000; the twelve-year-old 747-400F costs $138,000 to lease and $336,000 to maintain. Every one arrives with years on the clock, and old airframes add age-scaled mechanical failures on top of the invoice. The Antonovs are the same trap in fancy dress: the An-225 wants $700,000 weekly in maintenance for 250 tonnes you will never fill, on 4,000 kilometres of range and an 11,500-foot runway. Even at a generous 60 per cent load that is $7,400 a tonne in fixed cost alone. Cheap leases are not cheap; they are deferred bills.
Every type in the category
Reference entries for all 24, in the same order as the table. The table above carries payload, range, cruise speed, lease, price and fuel; these add the runway each type needs and its weekly maintenance bill.
Curtiss C-46 Commando
The war-surplus hauler. Twice a DC-3's load out of a short gravel strip, on two big radials nobody builds parts for any more.
ATR 72-600F
Purpose-built regional freighter. The only freighter that can work a 4,400 ft strip, and the most fuel-efficient per tonne of any small freighter — built to fill on thin lanes where a converted jet would fly a third full.
Embraer E190F
E-Jet freighter conversion for thin regional cargo lanes. Delivered a few years old.
Boeing 737-300F
Converted 737 Classic freighter. Cheap short-haul lift, delivered used at ~12 years old.
Boeing 737-400F
Stretched 737 Classic freighter. A little more payload than the -300F for a little more money, delivered used at ~12 years old.
Antonov An-12
Soviet turboprop freighter, rugged and utterly basic. Almost free to buy, near-worthless to sell, and delivered with ~16 years already on the clock.
Boeing 737-800BCF
Passenger-to-freighter conversion of the best-selling 737-800. The workhorse of e-commerce and express networks. Delivered a few years old, as every BCF is.
Boeing 727-200F
Classic tri-jet freighter, a night-cargo staple for decades. The cheapest way onto a mid-haul lane, delivered used at ~16 years old and thirsty with it.
Airbus A321P2F
Passenger-to-freighter A321, the modern narrowbody container freighter. Delivered a few years old, as every P2F is.
Boeing 757-200PF
Narrowbody express freighter, the backbone of integrators like UPS and FedEx. Delivered used at ~12 years old.
Boeing 767-200SF
Special Freighter conversion of the original 767-200. Smaller and thirstier than the 300F, and correspondingly cheaper — delivered used at ~12 years old.
Douglas DC-8-73F
Re-engined long-range DC-8 freighter, valued for trans-ocean cargo runs. Delivered used at ~16 years old: cheap to buy, but the maintenance curve is already climbing and there are only a dozen or so years left in the airframe.
Boeing 767-300F
The backbone of express and mid-haul cargo. FedEx and UPS fly hundreds; ideal medium-widebody capacity for transcontinental and regional intercontinental freight.
Airbus A300-600F
Twin-aisle regional freighter, the express hub workhorse. Delivered used at ~12 years old.
Airbus A330-200F
Modern purpose-built mid-size freighter. Better fuel economics than the 767F with more payload, suited to medium and long-haul cargo trunk routes.
McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30F
Widebody tri-jet freighter converted from retired DC-10 passenger frames. Enormous payload for the money — because you are buying a ~16-year-old airframe that will cost more to keep flying every year.
McDonnell Douglas MD-11F
Tri-jet freighter prized by cargo carriers long after passenger MD-11s retired. Delivered used at ~12 years — strong payload economics, rising upkeep.
Boeing 777F
The definitive modern long-haul freighter. Near-jumbo payload with twin-engine running costs.
Airbus A350F
Purpose-built freighter on the A350 airframe. Large main-deck door, efficient engines.
Boeing 747-400F
Nose-loading jumbo freighter converted from passenger 747-400s. Huge payload at a fraction of a new build, delivered around 12 years old.
Boeing 777-8F
Next-generation 777X freighter and the new flagship of the long-haul cargo fleet.
Antonov An-124-100 Ruslan
Strategic outsize freighter with a nose door and onboard cranes. Carries loads nothing else will take, delivered around 10 years old.
Boeing 747-8F
The largest production freighter in the world. Carries more than the -400F and burns less fuel per tonne doing it.
Antonov An-225 Mriya
The one-off six-engined giant. Unmatched outsize capability and almost impossible to fill — a prestige machine, not a network aircraft.