Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport within striking range of ‘million-tonne-club’

Ground hasn’t even been broken for Amazon’s US$1.5 billion hub, and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport’s (CVG) cargo volumes are already surging, with a 27 percent increase over 2016, pushing the Midwest airport’s cargo volumes up to 907,184 tonnes.

The year ended strong, with CVG’s December cargo traffic up 34 percent, year-over-year, to 99,228 tonnes.

Candace McGraw, CEO of CVG, credited the growth to new air carriers and destinations, which made the airport more competitive. She said that CVG was, “working with air cargo partners to establish and grow their operations, all of which grow the airport community and positively impact the local economy.”

Amazon is currently building a massive airfreight hub at CVG, with construction due to start in 2019, according to airport officials. Just last week, Amazon’s senior vice president of operations, Dave Clark, announced that the Seattle-based retailer had added a parcel of land to the site of its future air operations hub at CVG, following last year’s plans to invest US$1.5 billion into the project.

Once Amazon’s Prime Air moves its center of gravity to CVG – the airline hopes to have 40 aircraft operational by the end of the year – the Midwest airport’s volumes will start competing with other majors, but it’s still a long way off from FedEx’s Memphis Airport, which posted 4.3 billion tonnes of throughput cargo.