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Transportation Businesses

Amazon Expands Air Cargo Fleet With 15 More Planes, Will Have 70 Planes By 2021 (techcrunch.com) 58

Amazon announced this morning the expansion of its own air delivery network, Amazon Air. "The retailer says it's leasing an additional 15 Boeing 737-800 cargo aircraft from partner GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS)," reports TechCrunch. "These will join the five Boeing 737-800's already leased from GECAS, announced earlier this year. The aircraft will fly out of more than 20 U.S. air gateways in the Amazon Air network." From the report: In addition, Amazon says it will open more air facilities in 2019, including at Fort Worth Alliance Airport, Wilmington Air Park and Chicago Rockford International Airport. Meanwhile, the main Air Hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport will open in 2021. The Amazon Air network, then called Prime Air, was first launched in 2016, with the goal of speeding up Amazon's e-commerce deliveries, particularly for its Prime members. But over the years, the competition with partners-slash-rivals like FedEx have heated up -- and not only on air cargo, but also in newer areas like ground delivery robots and drones.

At the end of last year, Amazon announced more aircraft additions for Amazon Air, bumping the network from 40 planes to 50. Today, it says it's on track to reach 70 planes by 2021, thanks to this new expansion. The company also claims to have created thousands of U.S. jobs thanks to Amazon's investment of millions into its air network.

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Amazon Expands Air Cargo Fleet With 15 More Planes, Will Have 70 Planes By 2021

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  • by phayes ( 202222 ) on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @06:53AM (#58787116) Homepage

    I seriously doubt that Amazon has created a single new job due to their expanding fleet of planes. Every job they "create" by bringing it inside the Amazon tent will be offset by a job lost elsewhere (like Fedex).

    I'm a Prime member & appreciate most of the services rendered but that doesn't mean that I swallow it when they lie by omission on the amount of jobs they "create".

    Sad to see that my post will be preceded by the outright trollery I saw in the preceding posts. /. was so much better/intelligent before...

    • Most Logistic partners like FedEx and UPS have growth plans for their business that isn't reliant to Amazon. But for every plane Amazon buys doesn't mean one less plane that the logistic companies use. As they have other customers that needs products shipped as well. While Amazon is the Giant company, FedEx and UPS and the like focus a lot on smaller businesses. So the Million small businesses shipping product every day still need FedEx and UPS to ship their products.
      Amazon is huge, so without their pack

    • When productivity increase it means you just made more valuable things with less expensively. Regardless of whether you keep the profit or you lower the price and let the consumers get it, the bottom line is there's now more for you or the consumers to spend on other things. Now it's true the middlemen you cut out also would have spent their earnings as well. But you just freed up their resources to be applied to other uses.

      It's a net productivity increase if the overall cost declines or the overall sh

      • by jbengt ( 874751 )

        It's not a net productivity increase if it's just a substitution. However if it were just a substitution there isn't a lot of rationale for amazon to enter the shipping bussiness rather than outsource it.

        That's where your logic fails. If it's just a substitution, Amazon can gain the business & profit that FedEx / UPS loses from the substitution, so Amazon has every incentive to become an even greater behemoth than they've already become.

      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        It's a net productivity increase if the overall cost declines or the overall shipping capacity increases at a lower shipping cost. It's not a net productivity increase if it's just a substitution. However if it were just a substitution there isn't a lot of rationale for amazon to enter the shipping bussiness rather than outsource it. So they must see it as such. So if they can increase productivity this way and free up less productive resources for other uses it's a net gain for the economy.

        Vertical integration is typically to give yourself preferential treatment you'd not be able to buy on the open market, often to the detriment of the market as a whole. Amazon the shop will be pushing you to use Amazon the shipping not because it's necessarily better but because they can give themselves business. Plus you get absolute priority on the things you ship yourself, creating a service that a competitor can't easily buy from Fedex/UPS. It's a classic trick to leverage your market power in one market

    • Every job they "create" by bringing it inside the Amazon tent will be offset by a job lost elsewhere (like Fedex).

      The amount of parcels moved around the world has not decreased once in the past 10 years. It is still very much a growth market and I have no doubt that not a single Fedex (or other) job was lost as a result of Amazon insourcing some of it's air transport.

  • Given Fed-X dumped them last month, I guess they have no choice but to fly their own fleet in an effort to make up what Fed-X won't do for them now. And yes, make no mistake, it was Fed-X who refused to continue doing business with Amazon.

    I wonder why they picked 737's though? Cessna Citations seem to be better suited to cargo service. They are much more efficient, only require a single pilot to fly, can use much shorter runways and thus much lower cost and greater flexibility. They must have a deal with

    • Probably because a 737 freighter is way larger, with higher MTOW and cargo volume. I can't find many specifics but this one modification allows up to 24 tons or 12 pallets of cargo.
      http://www.b737.org.uk/737-800... [b737.org.uk]

      I don't even know if you could fit one pallet in the Cessna.

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