Jan. 30—The air cargo business, booming as never before during the global pandemic, is massively dominated by Boeing jets that make up most of the worldwide air freighter fleet. Yet there is a threat to that dominance.

A severe air cargo market dislocation looms ahead that will make obsolete Boeing's current jet freighter lineup and provide an opening for rival Airbus.

Boeing has been bleeding cash through a cascade of crises — the 737 MAX crashes, the pandemic, the 787 delivery halt — and has lost significant engineering talent in the downturn. Yet if Boeing is to retain its iron grip on the jet freighter market, it must in the next few years develop and launch new cargo aircraft.

The trigger is a new global aviation carbon emissions standard that just six years from now is set to force the shuttering of all three of Boeing's current Everett-built cargo jet programs — the 747F, 767F and 777F widebody freighters.

That's an ominous prospect for the Everett site, where Boeing employs about 30,000 people.

With assembly of the 787 Dreamliner passenger jet moved to South Carolina, production of 747 passenger jets ended and just nine more of the current 777 passenger jets on order, today many thousands of workers inside the largest airplane factory in the world build mostly those freighter aircraft.

The new CO2 emissions standard agreed internationally in 2017 gave airplane manufacturers 10 years after which they can build only jets powered by the newest-generation, most fuel-efficient engines. The 737 MAX and the 787 meet the standard, as will the forthcoming 777X; Boeing's older planes do not.

For more than two years, Boeing has pushed for a waiver to keep producing at least the 767F a bit longer. That's not assured.

The new standard is set to stop new deliveries of the current big 777F widebody freighter at the end of 2027, and unless Boeing succeeds in getting that extension, that's also the end date for the mid-size 767F.

By then the 747 jumbo freighter will already be long gone, with Boeing's iconic jet program scheduled to finally shut down later this year. With just six of the giant 747-8F models left to deliver, Boeing is set to hand over the last one to cargo carrier Atlas Air in October.

The threat to Boeing's cargo dominance comes at a time when orders for air cargo jets have exploded, driven by consumers ordering items online that need fast shipping.

Package Deliveries Boom, but Boeing's Aging Cargo Line Risks Losing Dominance to Airbus

Prices and profits for airfreight carriers have risen so much that Fehrm said "today you can fly an (Airbus) A330 passenger plane half empty and still make money on the freight carried below the passenger floor."

To buy time, Boeing is currently seeking a U.S. government waiver from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) emissions standard that would allow it to continue to make the 767F beyond 2027.