Amerijet to Repair 36-Year-Old 767 Freighter Buckled in Guatemala Landing

Amerijet International will repair a 36-year-old Boeing 767-300 freighter that suffered fuselage damage in a hard landing at Guatemala City last month, with the airline's insurer covering the cost because fixing the jet costs less than paying out a total-loss claim. CEO Joe Mozzali confirmed the decision, countering widespread industry speculation that the aircraft — old enough that many assumed it was headed for the scrapyard — would be parted out instead.

"Amerijet's insurance company will cover the cost of the repair because it is less expensive than paying a claim for an aircraft declared totally damaged," Mozzali told FreightWaves in an email exchange.

What happened to the aircraft?

The freighter, registered N373CM, departed Miami on Sept. 6 and landed nose-gear-first at Guatemala City, buckling the top of the fuselage, according to The Aviation Herald and photos circulating on social media. The aircraft has remained grounded at Guatemala City International Airport ever since.

Aviation safety experts explain that "skin buckling" occurs when the structure beneath the skin — ribs and load-bearing beams — becomes distorted or bent. The stress of a hard landing can transfer from the landing gear into the fittings, through the wing, and into the fuselage structure itself.

The aircraft has a long history. Boeing built it for Qantas Airways in November 1990, and Cargo Aircraft Management, the leasing arm of Wilmington, Ohio-based Air Transport Services Group, converted it to carry main-deck cargo in 2016. Amerijet operates a fleet of 11 767-300s.

Why repair a 36-year-old jet?

The economics of the decision reflect a structural squeeze in the air cargo market. Air cargo experts say badly damaged freighters are simply too valuable to scrap right now, for three converging reasons:

• A global shortage of widebody freighters keeps existing capacity scarce
• Supply chain challenges are slowing passenger-to-freighter (P2F) conversions
• Passenger airlines are holding onto older aircraft longer because engine-quality problems are delaying deliveries of new jets, shrinking the feedstock available for conversion

That scarcity explains why an insurer would rather fund a repair on a jet built in 1990 than write it off. Every widebody freighter pulled from service tightens a market that has little slack to absorb the loss.

What does this mean for Amerijet's operations?

The repair will happen in two stages, according to Mozzali. Amerijet has hired a local repair station in Guatemala City to carry out a temporary fix, after which the aircraft will be ferried to a maintenance facility for longer-term structural repair. No date is set for the jet's return to service.

The operational impact so far appears limited. Mozzali said N373CM had been operating as a spare aircraft, and its grounding has not affected Amerijet's scheduled or charter services.

The timing matters, though. Amerijet is currently flying two freighters for UPS to help the parcel carrier handle extra demand during peak shipping season, which runs until late December. A spare aircraft out of rotation removes a buffer precisely when network pressure is at its highest, even if scheduled flying remains intact for now.

The bigger picture for capacity

For shippers and forwarders, the episode is a small but telling marker of how tight widebody freighter capacity remains. When a three-decade-old converted freighter is worth repairing rather than scrapping, it signals that operators expect the shortage of large cargo aircraft to persist. With P2F conversion lines constrained and passenger airlines retiring fewer airframes due to engine-related delivery delays at Boeing and Airbus suppliers, airlines and lessors will likely keep squeezing every possible airframe — damaged or not — back into revenue service for the foreseeable future.