Amazon.com Serious About Its Own Air Delivery System

The retail giant is testing its own air delivery service for the transportation of parcels from the United States to the United Kingdom.

In hopes of starting its own air freight business, Amazon.com has been going back and forth to the United Kingdom since November, according to Evening Standard. The retail giant has been taking these parcels from the United States to the UK quite discretely as they don’t want the public to be aware of transportation service as yet. It has managed to transport a number of parcels, trying to get experience in the delivery service first before it makes it official in front of its customers.

As per the report by Evening Standard, there have been five flights weekly that transport these parcels from the US to the UK. The route taken by the plane is from Portland to Luton along with East Midlands and Doncaster airports. The return route that the flight is taking has been from Kassel in Germany back to Portland. The flights have been made to land close to fulfillment centers in Europe as they have been strategically worked on and would help in reducing transport cost as well.

There are two major Amazon warehouses in the United Kingdom which are located at Swansea and Dunfermline – which is as big as 14 football pitches combined. The other locations of the warehouses that are in London are Milton Keynes and Hemel Hempstead.

These flights, by the retail giant have been booked via DB Schenker which is a logistics company in Germany. The logistics company is planning on starting its operations in Italy and Spain as well, which is news that adds up to the retail business’s news of launching its own delivery service. In order to delay third party deliverers, the e-commerce company is also working on starting its own freight service due to which it is in talks with Atlas Air and Air Transport Services Group – ATSG.

The retailer had planned to start its own service by as soon as January 2016 by hiring 20 Boeing Co 767 aircrafts for in-house deliveries. In case the company starts to act on its own service by hiring these jets, it will be saving a lot of cost of its fast growing transport costs.

This news has come into attention ever since the e-retailer started to have problems with UPS – United Parcel Services. UPS was helping Amazon make its deliveries but it disappointed the company by sending in late deliveries. Given that Amazon is one of UPS’s major customers; they should really work on building a healthier relationship with the retailer.

According to the Wall Street Journal, both the executive directors of the companies have had talk regarding the fiction between the two them. Due to the increase demand during the holiday season, the retail giant needed a delivery service provider who the organization could completely rely on.