News / Amazon decides it's time 'to shout' about its air cargo offering

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Amazon Air Cargo has decided it’s time to make its presence felt in the industry and looks to openly sell its airfreight capacity to third parties.

One of three main sponsors of TIACA’s ACF in Miami this week, Amazon Air Cargo’s global director, Tom Bradley, told delegates that although the company had been offering space to third parties for a few years, it was now time to come out into the open.

He said: “We’ve been building our operational capabilities, our technical capabilities, and we decided that we’re ready to shout about our business, and talk about what we do, and how we can improve your end-to-end.”

Amazon has around 100 aircraft and domestic networks through the US, Europe and India, said Mr Bradley, and added: “But on a periodic basis, we’re always evaluating new countries, new regions, expansion opportunities for aircraft.

“So we’ll continue to innovate, we’ll continue to make decisions and, ultimately, provide the speed and reliability most Amazon customers demand.”

And Mr Bradley said he was aiming to be customer-centric and keen to emphasise that Amazon did not need to prioritise its own parcel business over third party volumes.

“We’ve got a very dense network, and that gives us a lot of air flexibility. We also have a ground network, which is the densest in the US. That gives us a ton of options. And when you pair that with technology, we have real-time tech that can send Amazon customers packages via millions of different group combinations. And we can make real-time capacity adjustments.

“We very rarely have to choose between an Amazon package and an air cargo package because of that density, because of that flexibility.

“We like the air cargo business,” he added. “We wouldn’t have launched and invested in it if we didn’t like the shape of the business as a standalone. That’s really the focus for 2024, getting to a strong, credible, fast, reliable service for air cargo. And that’s where we are today, super excited about that.”

He declined to say whether Amazon sees itself as an integrator, but added: “Amazon does offer external services on sea, on road, on rail. And our aim is to listen to our customers and do what our customers want.

“The immediate focus for me and the team is building this air cargo business, and we’ll see what comes after that,” he added.