News / Amerijet forced to park idle freighters after postal contracts end

Overcapacity, after losing contracts, has led Amerijet to ground six of its 22 aircraft – and it is reportedly considering parking more, along with deferring costly maintenance projects.  

The US cargo airline has struggled following the end of two large US postal contracts; in October, CEO Joe Mozzali stated “it isn’t a secret” that Amerijet had seen financial struggles in recent soft market conditions, as reported by Freightwaves.

In a bid to save money, Amerijet has now parked three 757-200 freighters. One 757-200 flew into Marana Air Park on 8 December.  

A search conducted by The Loadstar found that three 767 freighters are on the ground. However, Amerijet said: “Two of our Boeing 767 aircraft are undergoing C-checks—one in Mexico and the other in Turkey.”

However, parked aircraft, while saving some costs, can still incur monthly lease payments that can exceed $300,000 per unit. 

Of Amerijet’s operational aircraft, The Loadstar found that two have not flown in three days, suggesting the carrier is also cutting utilisation. 

One source told The Loadstar: “A portion of Amerijet’s customer base pulled back, or are pulling back, on some longer-term contracts, as market conditions changed. This, coupled with the 18-month or longer delay in the aircraft conversion process, created excess capacity.” 

The source said the United States Postal Service (USPS) was cutting its airfreight use in the domestic US market in favour of road transport. USPS had apparently been making progress over the past year, but is “betting the ranch” it can move traffic from the air to the ground. 

USPS was “on a mission” to make this move in early January, said the source, despite encouragement from Amerijet to wait until spring when the roads were less likely to be affected by poor weather. 

“Amerijet met with USPS a few months ahead of the announced pulldown and asked about extending aircraft leasing contracts etc, and they didn’t indicate there would be any change in the network… A few months later they pulled back right after the new seven-year lease contracts were signed.” 

In response to this, a spokesperson for Amerijet told The Loadstar: “Amerijet has multiple ACMI and CMI contracts. We continue to operate for all of our ACMI customers.”

The source also told The Loadstar there could be cause for optimism at Amerijet: “The company has seen an upswing in demand on the core network in the Latin American region.

“Rates still need to come up a bit, but volumes are at record levels and new contracts, such as was announced by UPS and others in the region, are promising over the long term.” 

The Amerijet spokesperson told The Loadstar: “We want to emphasise that we are actively evaluating new opportunities to add capacity in some higher-volume markets. Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that we recently added two Boeing 767 aircraft to our fleet, one in April and one in July of 2023.”