Hawaiian Airlines receives first of 10 freighters for Amazon operations

Hawaiian Airlines has received the first of 10 freighters that it will operate for e-commerce giant Amazon.

In a second quarter earnings conference call, the airline’s president and chief executive Peter Ingram said the A330-300 converted aircraft is situated at its headquarters in Honolulu and is due to start operating in October.

“Earlier this month, the first A330-300 freighter that we will operate for Amazon arrived in Honolulu,” said Ingram. “Over the next few months, we’ll use the aircraft for employee familiarization work.

“This is the first of 10 freighter aircraft we will be inducting over the course of the next 1.5 years providing us a new and diversified stream of revenue that will begin to ramp more materially in 2024.”

Air Cargo News reported last October that Amazon Air planned to add 10 A330-300 converted freighters from lessor Altavair, to be operated by Hawaiian.

The aircraft are being converted by Germany-headquartered Elbe Flugzeugwerke (EFW), a joint venture between Singapore-based ST Engineering and France-headquartered Airbus.

The deal with Hawaiian will last for eight years with options to extend for a further two and three years.

Ingram said in the earnings call that its operations for Amazon will be “fairly limited” this year, as will the financial impact.

Amazon recently confirmed it is reducing its European flights after rapidly ramping up operations over the last few years.

Amazon has also been reducing its flying in North America. CargoFacts recently confirmed that the e-commerce firm had ended its operations with regional carrier Silver Airways.

The carrier had been operating five ATR-72 aircraft on behalf of Amazon.

Meanwhile, last year ATSG said that Amazon, along with DHL, was also scaling back its operations with them.

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