Amazon announced that it has purchased 11 second-hand Boeing 767-300 aircraft from Delta and WestJet, the first for the e-commerce giant. The company has worked steadily to build its air cargo capacity over the years through lease agreements, but this is the first time Amazon has owned its own aircraft.
The deal comes as aircraft prices drop due to the coronavirus pandemic. Airlines are scrambling to shrink their fleets as passenger demand falls amid requests to close around the world. The company says the purchases include seven aircraft from Delta and four aircraft from WestJet, which will join the Amazon network by 2022.
“Our goal is to continue to place orders for customers across the United States the way they expect from Amazon, and purchasing our private jets is a natural next step toward that goal,” said Sarah Rhodes, vice president of Amazon Global Air. He said in a press release. “Having a mix of leased and owned aircraft in our growing fleet allows us to better manage our operations, which in turn helps us keep pace with our customers’ promises.”
Amazon launched its air fleet in 2016, assuming that by 2022 it will have more than 85 aircraft, both leased and owned. According to a year old analysisAmazon offers more than half of all its packages in the US as it speeds up its push to own the entire logistics chain and end its relationship with companies like FedEx and UPS.
The newly purchased planes are intended to help speed up the delivery of packages purchased through Amazon, which has seen record order as a result of the pandemic. The company says it will continue to rely on outside carriers to operate these new aircraft.
Amazon is quickly becoming a major player in the transportation world. Obviously, as one of the largest delivery and logistics companies in history, Amazon has been set to play a huge role in the way people and things move around the world. But some of the company’s more recent deals indicate that Jeff Bezos has ambitions beyond just delivering packages.
Amazon It was recently acquired Starting the Zoox self-driving car, which just started It unveiled its multi-directional robotic prototype. The company has also participated in multiple financing rounds for electric car company Rivian, which is designing the Battery powered truck For last-mile deliveries to the delivery giant, and contributed $ 530 million in the financing round of driverless cars and trucks Aurora startups. (Aurora has just acquired Uber’s self-driving car division.)
And of course there is the company’s interest in the delivery of the UAV. The company was recently The approval was given by the Federal Aviation Administration To operate as an unmanned airline company in the United States, paving the way for it to start offering commercial shipments on a trial basis. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the decision allows Amazon to “safely and effectively deliver packages to customers” and allow its drones to carry packages outside the operator’s visual field of vision.
