wjcandee

I don't have any desire to intrude on the Hete Hate, but on this particular point I think it's a mistake to assume that the aircraft that those carriers wanted wouldn't simply have been furnished by other lessors.

Phil Scruggs at AerCap, Steve Rimmer at Guggenheim (now Altavair) and Dave Houlihan from AWAS (now DAE Capital) would have been kicking in the door at those airlines for the opportunity to place aircraft there, as all of them have actually done successfully at Cargojet.

That CAM and Titan snagged the 40-aircraft order from a highly-creditworthy customer like Amazon has I'm sure chapped the heinies of all the guys above, and that accomplishment has a lot to do, I think, with the job that CAM, LGSTX and ABX did for Amazon with the Aerosmith network. The Amazon flying was initially ABX's to lose, just as future aircraft orders are for CAM and Titan to lose. But I'm confident that every one of those other lessors has crafted and pitched other methods by which Amazon could address its lift needs, and every one of them is looking for ways to eliminate any perceived advantage in the 767-300 leasing space that CAM and Titan might currently have.

I think that it is notable that N380AN is being converted for Cargojet in TLV, but not by CAM. It's the first ex-AA 767-300 in some time that was purchased and converted by someone other than CAM. This was a missed opportunity by CAM, which had just placed a newly-converted ex-AA 767-300 at Cargojet in November of last year.

There is a lot of competition in aircraft leasing, and if CAM doesn't do it, somebody else will.

I also think that it would have been nearly-impossible for ABX to make money on the business currently being serviced by Amerijet and NAC. Yes, Amerijet is flying the living crap out of its recently-acquired 767-300s, pounding them with business in the financially-challenging little niche that it serves. But it's a niche in which it is notoriously-difficult to get paid enough, if to get paid at all. Meanwhile, Northern's MIA operation is going to have to score a lot more business if it is going to survive. Some folks driving regularly by the airport would swear that the NAC and StratAir aircraft haven't moved in weeks. They have moved, but that impression is telling, and valid. Given that ABX doesn't have an integrated source of business like StratAir and Amerijet do, I don't see where it could have fit profitably into their niche. Some may disagree with that, but certainly those guys could have found aircraft elsewhere if CAM didn't want to lease to them.