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Drilling Deep: airlines do a quick two-step to orient more toward freight

Image: Jim Allen/FreightWaves

Airlines have suffered mightily from the loss of passenger traffic as a result of the pandemic. But there also has been a demand for their services to move freight, including an area that has always been taken to the skies to move from point A to point B: medical supplies.

On this week’s Drilling Deep podcast, host John Kingston talks with his colleague Eric Kulisch of FreightWaves on how airlines have tried to use their spare capacity to compensate for their loss in passenger movement. There are fewer commercial passenger flights with their bellies filled with freight along with luggage. But there is still demand for those services and Eric will talk about how airlines are responding.

John will also discuss whether diesel prices have come down “enough” at the pump given the decline in other prices. The question: what constitutes “enough”?


John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.