Two and a half years ago, Amazon announced that it was making its own fleet of 20 aircraft to deliver packages with the highest speed worldwide. Little by little they have been adding more aircraft to the fleet, and today they have announced the addition of more units to reach a total of 50 aircraft.
Amazon Air already has 50 aircraft contracted to send packages
Amazon Air today added 10 aircraft to the 40 it already had, just a few days after FedEx CEO Frederick Smith said that Amazon is not a threat to his business. The aircraft are Boeing 767-300, and are exclusively responsible for transporting company packages through 20 airports in the United States.
These aircraft play a key role in promising the delivery within 48 hours of the packages that the company guarantees to its Prime customers. While in a smaller country like Spain, with a good road system, land transport can be guaranteed in 24 hours (even in 1 or 2 hours in large cities), in the United States with its immense size this is It makes it much more difficult. In addition, Amazon is opening new logistics centers in Spain, and will soon open the largest in our country in Seville soon with 100,000 square meters.
ATSG will buy them, and will offer them in leasing to Amazon
These 10 new aircraft will join the company fleet in the next two years. The company will also open a Regional Air Hub in 2019 at the Fort Worth Alliance Airport, as well as another at the Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky International Airport. And is that Amazon has dozens of stores throughout the country, and does not always have everything where their customers need it. Thanks to this, they can send packages quickly from completely equidistant areas, such as from Seattle to Miami.
The aircraft will be purchased by the company Air Transport Services Group, Inc. (ATSG), which will then offer them to Amazon through leasing. Coincidentally, a few days ago the company bought 20 used 767 aircraft from American Airlines, which had withdrawn them, and that will be joining its staff for the next 3 years. In principle, the main customer of these aircraft will be Amazon, and passenger aircraft will have to be converted into cargo planes.
According to estimates, this type of package delivery will negatively affect other US parcel companies, such as FedEx. The company claims that recent bad results have nothing to do with Amazon, but with bad decisions that they have made. In addition, they claim that their shipping business continues to increase considerably in the country.
Also published on Medium.