Originally Posted by
CallmeJB
About a week ago, an afternoon Atlas Amazon flight CVG-IAH went mechanical. They swapped from the Amazon tail into a DHL tail (N65_GT) to cover the flight. How the heck did they do that?! Do DHL and AMZN have an agreement to cover each other's flying? I mean, the N65_GT aircraft are all owned by DHL, right?
I believe that you are correct that those ex-Airborne Express 767-200s are owned (or controlled) by DHL, and Atlas operates them under a CMI agreement.
Assuming that that is the case, and that one or more flights took place as you described, I do not believe that Atlas would just up and do that. Generally, these agreements do not provide the CMI carrier with the right to use the aircraft at its discretion in other operations. However, there is nothing to say that the aircraft owner can't agree with Amazon (or UPS or FedEx or USPS or whomever) to cause the aircraft to be operated by the CMI carrier on a flight [pursuant to the relevant FARs] at the behest of whomever. Particularly during Peak, if there is stranded freight, the aircraft owner can agree to help out another entity, assuming that the CMI carrier has the pilots and willingness to fly it.
I don't know about this specific instance, but there were multiple such operations by a variety of carriers during Peak, and that's the way they were handled. The aircraft owner/lessee responds to a request by another carrier or entity for help.
This is in the spirit of Joe Patroni and his ilk.
Hope this is useful...
PS You guys are too nice. Happy to assemble the info above for y'all. And thanks for the correction about the second GTI hot spare! I wasn't aware of the second one.