Austrian Airlines said it is halting its ‘preighter’ operations this month and will resume passenger services on those repurposed planes from July. 

The carrier regularly operated as cargo-only aircraft between Asia and Europe since March 2020 when Covid-19 grounded most of the world's passenger planes — impacting bellyhold capacity.

It said two B777s (OE-LPA and OE-LPC) also had their seats removed to boost cargo capacity, which the carrier said became the “backbone” of the cargo operation.

After operating ‘preighters’ for 15 months, OE-LPA will be the last of the two aircraft to have its seats replaced. From July, it said that the aircraft will resume passenger flights to North America, among other destinations.

“On 159 flights, we transported 4,500 tons of relief supplies to Europe in the fight against the pandemic,” Austrian said.

“The cargo included 200 million protective masks, 30 million test kits and more than 15 million medical gloves. We flew the goods to Austria, but also to Germany and Italy,” it added.