Airbus A321(P2F) blank illustration templates

You know you’re getting old when aircraft types you remember being launched brand new start to become the target of freighter conversion companies.

Has the Airbus A321 reached that age? More importantly, am I *gasp* that old?

Because of the fact that the Airbus A321(P2F) exists, yes. It has. And I am.

Side view templates of the Airbus A321(P2F)

If it wasn’t obvious by now, “P2F” stands for Passenger to Freighter. At first glance, it looks like a standard A321 with plugged windows and a huge cargo door carved out of the side of the fuselage. It’s a little more complicated than that though.

The development process

The P2F was developed by Precision Conversions (in partnership with Airbus). Airbus never developed their own version of an A321 freighter. At least not yet anyway.

It also worth noting that Precision Conversions wasn’t even the first company that attempted doing freighter modifications to the A321.

Airbus Freighter Conversion GmbH gave it a go in the late 2000s. That program was scrapped in 2011 before any prototypes were built.

Design details

Structurally, the P2F is nearly identical to the passenger A321. You’ll see no differences in overall length or height compared to my existing A321 templates.

The wings are exactly the same, as are the engines and landing gear. Even the vertical stabilizer is a complete carryover. However:

• All doors (and emergency exits) were plugged.
• All windows except one were plugged.
• The main cargo door was placed approximately between where window number 8 and 9 were. It extended to approximately where the middle of door 2 used to be.
• As far as I can tell, at the time of this writing, only aircraft with V2500 engines (and no sharklets on the wings) have been converted. Perhaps there’s a plan to convert other engine and wing types, but I’m not aware of it.
• An all new small boarding door was cut out of the fuselage near the cockpit windows.

It’s the addition of that all new boarding door which fascinates me the most. I mean, it couldn’t have been easy considering the curvature of the fuselage in that area. It’s probably a fairly dense area for wiring and electronics as well.

The engineering involved for the addition of that little door must’ve been bonkers. Maybe that’s why Airbus never wanted to develop their own freighter version of the A321?

I’d believe it.