Tag: 747

New Pages for Northwest Cargo

Freight was always a key revenue source for NWA, and during World War II the company gained invaluable experience with dedicated cargo operations. Military lift contracts and charter flights contributed steady revenue, and from the mid 1960s Northwest ran its own scheduled freighter network. We have launched two resource pages to help enthusiasts and researchers better study this important part of the company:

First is a collection of cargo schedules – grids from passenger timetables as well as standalone publications, starting with the first published grid from October 5, 1964, and going all the way to the end of 2008. As our general timetable scanning project continues, this page will also keep growing.

Then we also have a library of route maps we have created based on the timetable data, again running from 1964 to 2008 with the aim for at least one map per year.

As more Cargo-related documents and stories come together, we intend to create a “discovery page” to thread the Museum’s materials together for easy reading and linking. If you worked with the Cargo division and have unique materials to share, please get in touch!

Maps of Northwest’s Boeing 747 routes over the years

Northwest’s first 747 routes in 1970 allowed for plenty of resting time at MSP, but covered the key trunk routes that would define the carrier’s strategy for the next 15 years.
By the mid-1970s, passenger 747s had effectively displaced the 707-320 fleet, and new all-cargo ships (noted in dashed lines) made Northwest the most important air-cargo player over the North Pacific well into the 1980s.
While the new Atlantic routes were of course an entirely new line of business for Northwest, the better range of the -200 series was just being tested on NWA’s first “hub bypass” routes past Tokyo to Seoul and Osaka.
Both passenger and cargo routes have experienced steady growth in the early 1980s. The Atlantic network has stabilized and a Seoul mini-hub is starting to form.
Post-merger Northwest is adding trans-Pacific routes at a steady pace, while the Atlantic side has slimmed down and largely transitioned to DC-10 equipment. Los Angeles has 747 nonstops to Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, and Taipei, and the Seoul hub is starting to approach Narita’s size. The first routes from Detroit give a hint of that hub’s potential.
The brief and incredible foray to Australia in 1992 is well-illustrated here – while California is an expected gateway, NWA’s most audacious and controversial route is the real star of this map: New York JFK – Osaka Itami – Sydney. No other airline had tried this routing and the Japanese government was not happy with NWA’s reading of air service treaties. But without connecting feed at either end this was fated to be a brief experiment.
By the mid-1990s the Seoul hub had been abandoned, but Detroit was spinning up with long-range nonstops to Asia, and the first 747s to the KLM hub at Amsterdam demonstrated how much traffic the new alliance could generate.
The pre-9/11 map of 747 services shows how well NWA had tuned its operation to flow massive amounts of traffic through its key hubs. While Airbus equipment was starting to fill in on lower-density services, this is the 747’s high point.
The post-9/11 environment and ramp-up of A330 equipment, plus the growing realization that Tokyo’s value as a premium traffic hub had waned, put the writing on the wall for the 747 even before Northwest’s bankruptcy and eventual merger with Delta. While Northwest Cargo continued to pull in steady business and operate reliably, its aging 747-200Fs were going to need to be replaced – and it was facing much heavier competition from dedicated cargo lines like Polar, UPS, and FedEx, as well as much stronger Asian competitors. After the merger had been executed, NWA Cargo was terminated and its fleet retired. Delta would radically redeploy the remaining 747-400 frames with heavy rotation out of Atlanta and JFK in addition to Detroit. Asian service would increasingly bypass Narita in favor of alliances with Korean Air and China Eastern. Delta’s 767-300 and 777-200 craft were initially better suited for Pacific service, and were able to completely replace the 747-400 before the pandemic.
Last holdouts for the Queen of the Skies under the Red Tail.
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