Amazon continues to expand its business empire and it is willing to spend billions of dollars to reach new heights. On Wednesday, the company opened its $1.5 billion air hub in northern Kentucky. It is a huge achievement for Amazon Air, the company’s burgeoning air cargo arm that launched in 2016.
It operates out of more than 40 airports across the country, but its base in Kentucky will serve as the central nerve of its nationwide cargo network. Its $1.5 billion air hub will allow the tech giant to supercharge its one-day, same-day delivery capabilities in more areas. The e-commerce giant also expanded its aviation logistics unit beyond the country. It also opened a 20,000-square-meter regional air hub at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany in 2020.
Amazon Air and New Opportunities
Amazon’s air hub spans a campus of more than 600 acres. Its air hub includes a ramp for aircraft parking, a multilevel parking structure as well as seven buildings. The tech giant’s $1.5 billion air hub is designed to have a capacity for 100 Amazon-branded planes and handle an estimated 200 flights per day.
Amazon’s cargo airline has more than 75 aircraft in the network. Amazon expects to have more than 80 aircraft at this time in 2022, both leased and owned. It wants to increase the number of planes to 85 by the end of 2022. But the company does not plan to offer its cargo services to other companies for the foreseeable future.
Air Transport Services Group as well as Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings are among Amazon Air’s operators. In 2020, low-cost leisure passenger airline Sun Country began flying converted Boeing 737s for Amazon. This year, the e-commerce giant acquired 11 used Boeing 767-300 jets from Delta and WestJet, Amazon’s first-ever outright aircraft purchase as prices for planes fell in the pandemic.
