Amazon blitzes the skies for speedy holiday deliveries
In 2016, Amazon might be the closest thing we have to Santa Claus.
Amazon wants customers to get their holiday gifts on time so much, it's leased a fleet of 40 jets and packed them with orders to be shipped around the United States, according to Reuters.
The company is hellbent on flinging orders to the doorsteps of Prime customers as fast as humanly possible. Amazon promises the estimated 35-50 million U.S. members of its Prime service that customers will get their packages within two days, but really it wants those customers to get their packages even more quickly whenever possible. Unlike most airplanes full of packages, Amazon-leased planes reportedly don't do stopovers, so they spend more time getting where they need to go. They also take off much later than most planes with similar missions, which allows them to depart with items ordered just before their customers drift off to sleep.
The company insisted to Reuters that this Amazon airway is just a "supplement" to their use of FedEx and UPS planes that normally deliver their packages, but Reuters found a few interesting bits of information about the type of packages Prime Air delivers.
Though the planes were stuffed with goods, the contents of the packages were on the lighter side. Reuters speculated that this is a good way to avoid the costs of shipping certain items with FedEx and UPS, which have begun to charge shipping prices based on the size of the box instead of the weight of whatever's inside that box. According to this theory, Amazon is using its 40 leased planes to send bulky yet lightweight items around the country, which allows them to avoid paying UPS and FedEx more for lightweight but large items that can't fit inside smaller containers.
Amazon's planes often carry 37-52 percent of the maximum weight they could, while the maximum weight carried by FedEx and UPS planes is consistently at 53 and 56 percent, respectively, according to Reuters.
Air Amazon might not present much competition to FedEx and UPS for the time being, but those companies only have to look to book publishers if they want to see how dangerous Amazon can be to an established industry.
Amazon, for now, has not responded to a Mashable request for information about whether they intend to expand their fleet.
Topics Amazon
Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.
