Amazon wants to acquire its own fleet of cargo jets

Amazon.com is negotiating to lease 20 Boeing 767 jets for its own air-delivery service, cargo-industry executives have told The Seattle Times. The online retail giant wants to build out its own cargo operations to avoid delays from carriers such as United Parcel Service, which have struggled to keep up with the rapid growth of e-commerce. “Amazon is pretty fed up with the third-party carriers being a bottleneck to their growth,” Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst Colin Sebastian said. That has led Amazon to consider handling more of its own delivery. A senior aircraft-leasing company executive familiar with Amazon’s plans said the company has approached several cargo-aircraft lessors to line up the planes. The company has had talks with Air Transport Services Group (ATSG), Atlas Air and Kalitta Air, according to sources, though Kalitta Chief Executive Connie Kalitta denied he has talked with Amazon. Leasing 20 jets would be a significant expansion of an Amazon trial operation out of Wilmington, Ohio, operated by ATSG on Amazon’s behalf, sources said. A cargo-industry source said Amazon expects to make a decision to go beyond the trial run and pull the trigger on a larger air-cargo operation by the end of January.