Amazon Air is in a new stage of its development, characterised by moves to optimise a settled network, with a shift to widebody freighters and night flights to bolster next-day delivery capabilities.
These are the main findings of the latest report by the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University, which has tracked Amazon Air’s progress in recent years.
“Amazon Air is a much different air cargo unit from two years ago, due to its addition of widebody aircraft, expanded nocturnal flying, and heavy emphasis on the domestic US market,” says the report.
The company has moved on from US network build-up; it has not added new airports over the past year, but has shrunk the network by dropping five stations since mid-2023, a move tied to the withdrawal of five turboprop planes from its operation.
“There’s less experimentation now, more optimisation,” commented Joseph Schwieterman, the Chaddick Institute’s director.
And the fleet build-up seems complete for now, he added saying he did not expect to see a marked increase in Amazon’s fleet in the foreseeable future.
“However, increasing utilisation and reactivating parked aircraft will allow for another capacity boost, with expansion heavily leaning on longhaul US routes. Although Amazon Air’s fleet grew from 93 to 99 over the past year, around a dozen planes are parked, including two newly received A330s,” the report points out.
In line with the reduction of the turboprop fleet, the report shows less flying of sectors under 400 miles. This resembles earlier developments at FedEx and UPS (and earlier in the US overnight freighter market for airfreight), which have seen a migration of traffic moving shorter distances to ground transport.
Correspondingly, Amazon has boosted longer stage sectors in its network, Again, this has gone hand in hand with the shift in the fleet to widebody aircraft, which now make up 75% of its lift in the US. Amazon Air has ten A330-300 freighters, seven of which have been added over the past year – two have yet to enter service.
The A330 has a 17% increase in tonnage over the B767-300, which used to be Amazon’s largest freighter, and the A330 build-up boosted Amazon Air’s capacity in the US by 14.3%. Leaving out aircraft currently not flying, the carrier’s lift is up 7% from a year ago.
In Europe and India, operations have changed little, anchored on B737 freighter fleets.
Another major shift in Amazon Air’s operations has been an increased focus on nocturnal flights. Those that operate between 11pm and 6am increased by more than a third last year and now account for 38.9% of all departures, up from 29.1% in early 2024. On average, the carrier operates 67 nocturnal flights daily.
This move has put more than 90% of the US mainland population within 250 miles of an airport served overnight by Amazon, or a one-day truck run from its main logistics hub in Cincinnati – a significant boost to the e-commerce giant’s ability to provide next-day delivery across the country.
Mr Schwieterman noted that the firming of Amazon’s network included ‘greater regularity’. Whereas in the early stages some routes were flown infrequently and departure times might vary, operations have been synchronised to a much larger extent.
“The schedule now runs like a clock – it’s the same, day after day, week after week,” he said.
Alongside the larger capacity offered by the widebody fleet, this schedule integrity should help Amazon Air draw in more airfreight from third parties, Mr Schwieterman reckons. Last October, the carrier officially opened its network to third-party traffic.
In light of the headwinds for parcel, as well a general airfreight, traffic from moves by the US government, increased capacity utilisation of expensive assets looks like a good idea.
