Over the Christmas period, the Evening Standard broke the news that Amazon have been secretly running their own air freight service between their fulfilment centres in the UK, Germany and Poland.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but apparently the charted Boeing 737 has been making a round trip flight five days a week for the past month or so, cutting out the traditional courier companies you might expect them to use. This explains how they’re able to ship goods from Germany to the UK or vice versa, to arrive within just two days for free if you’re an Amazon Prime customer, without racking up enormous courier fees.
Courier costs aside, bearing in mind that (depending on model) a 737 can carry around 18 tonnes, that’s a hell of a lot of freight capacity to shift stock to and from the continent.
We’ve already heard that in the US Amazon looking to charter 20 jets to form their own air freight division. Now it looks like they’ll be doing the same in the UK, with flights to Spain and Italy expected to follow.
