Red Baron

Amazon plans to launch air freight service for Chinese sellers
By Laura Stevens and Erica E. Phillips
Published: Mar 15, 2017 8:08 a.m. ET
WSJ.com

Amazon.com Inc. has developed a business to handle shipments for its sellers by land and by sea—and soon by air.
The Seattle-based retail giant is planning to offer its sellers in China the ability to fly their goods internationally as air cargo, according to an Amazon Logistics site.
The move is an expansion of Amazon’s AMZN, +0.05% growing business as a global freight forwarder and third-party logistics company, putting it more directly in competition with companies like United Parcel Service Inc. UPS, +0.85% and Deutsche Post AG’s DPW, +0.52% DHL. In recent months, Amazon began handling the shipment of goods by ocean to its U.S. warehouses from Chinese merchants selling on its site, taking on a role it had previously left to global freight-transportation companies.
Amazon’s entry into the market is “a huge wake-up call to an industry that’s been very slow to adopt technology,” said Ryan Petersen, chief executive of Flexport Inc., a San Francisco-based startup freight-forwarder that uses software to scrub inefficiencies from the process of arranging international cargo shipments for small- and midsize companies.
Many traditional freight forwarders still conduct their business via phone, email or even fax machine, but Amazon’s entrance into the sector could drive shippers away from that method in favor of a user-friendly technology platform. Petersen said at least one of his firm’s customers has used Amazon’s service—now a direct competitor to Flexport’s technology—to arrange an ocean freight shipment.

Red Baron

Now the rumors of Amazon buying/leasing B-777's has a backing....

atpcliff

Amazon Plans Air Cargo Service for Chinese Customers

Amazon previously tried to buy the Frankfurt-Hahn airport, has one 737 flying Amazon boxes in Europe, and had previously purchased the pacific container shipping company this article is referencing.

wjcandee

Maybe, but I think there's a fair amount of belly space and other excess capacity ex-Asia available to freight brokers at present, so I read the article to mean that they were going to start by moving goods on that unused capacity. I think they're selling cargo, not express.

Whiplash6

"Amazon will partner with third-party carriers to build the global enterprise and then gradually squeeze them out once the business reaches sufficient volume and Amazon learns enough to run it on its own, the documents said."

DC8 Driver

That was funny.

Kougarok

Looks like they aren't going to take ATSG and Atlas's word on the airplane maintenance- http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/n...html?ana=yahoo

Aryan

Trust but verify.

JonnyKnoxville

Or they are hiring the new management team for the combined ATSG and AAWW maintenance department.

With the recent PEMCO aquisition and AMES in place, Amazon could be building its maintenance department through their own management team and through acquisitions of the aforementioned companies.

sherpster

The more likely scenario is that Amazon drops atsg at some point.