Amazon declared the beginning of $1.5 billion Amazon Air hub operations in northern Kentucky, which will help accelerate its push for faster delivery and control over its logistic network.
The announcement is a major milestone which is coming after 4 years of planning and construction for Amazon Air’s U.S. cargo network. Amazon has enlarged its aviation logistics unit in the U.S. with more than 40 locations and launched its European air hub in 2020 at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, remarked, “This hub is going to let us get packages to customers faster. That’s a big deal.”
The hub has a campus of over 600 acres that features seven buildings and includes a ramp for aircraft parking, a multi-level parking structure. The 800,000 square-foot sortation building is equipped with the innovative robotics technology where packages are sorted by zip code and consolidated into trucks before delivery.
It is built to hold capacity for 100 Amazon-branded planes and handle approximately 200 flights per day. “Right now, we’re focused on our customers for sure. We built the hub in Cincinnati to serve our Amazon customers, there’s really no other purpose than that”– said Rhoads – vice president of Amazon Global Air.
As of now Amazon now has 75+ aircraft in its network and the company expects to have more than 80 planes in its network and 85, by the end of 2022.
“We’re learning a lot as a company through this process of owning and working through the conversion of aircraft. “A lot of it comes down to availability of feedstock and what makes the most sense for our network and our customers as well. We are becoming a fairly big network and we’re happy with the service that we’re getting right now,” Rhoads said.
