Amazon announced that it has purchased 11 used Boeing 767-300 jets from Delta and WestJet, an innovation for the e-commerce giant. The company has steadily increased its air cargo capacity over the years through leasing contracts, but this is the first time that Amazon has owned its own aircraft.
The deal comes at a time when plane prices fell due to the coronavirus pandemic. Airlines have been rushing to reduce their fleets as passenger demand drops amid blocking requests around the world. Purchases include seven Delta aircraft and four WestJet aircraft, which will enter the Amazon network by 2022, the company says.
“Our goal is to continue serving customers in the United States in the way they expect from Amazon, and buying our own aircraft is the next natural step toward that goal,” said Sarah Rhoads, vice president of Amazon Global Air, in a Press release. “Having a combination of owned and leased aircraft in our growing fleet allows us to better manage our operations, which in turn helps us to keep pace with delivering on promises to customers.”
Amazon launched its air fleet in 2016, assuming that by 2022 it will have more than 85 planes, rented and owned. According to an analysis made a year ago, Amazon delivers more than half of all its packages to the United States as it accelerates its effort 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 by Amazon, which had record demand as a result of the pandemic. The company says it will continue to rely on third-party carriers to operate these new aircraft.
Amazon is fast becoming a major player in the transportation world. Obviously, as one of the largest delivery and logistics companies in history, Amazon has always been destined to play an important role in the way people and things move around the world. But some of the company’s most recent deals suggest that Jeff Bezos’s company has ambitions that go beyond package delivery.
Amazon recently acquired the autonomous car startup Zoox, which has just launched its omnidirectional prototype robotaxi. The company also participated in several financing rounds for electric vehicle company Rivian, which is designing a battery-powered van for the delivery giant’s last mile deliveries, and contributed to the startup’s $ 530 million financing round. of cars and trucks without driver Aurora. (Aurora has just acquired Uber’s autonomous car division.)
And, of course, there is the company’s interest in delivering drones. The company recently received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate as a drone airline in the United States, paving the way to begin offering commercial deliveries on an experimental basis. The FAA said the decision allows Amazon to “deliver packages to customers safely and efficiently” and let its drones transport packages outside the operator’s line of sight.