Amazon has purchased its first A330-300 two years after it started adding Airbus medium-widebody freighters to its fleet.
Amazon received a certificate of registration from the FAA for the 2012-vintage unit 1359 on July 3, a day after the Trent 700-powered aircraft arrived in Marana, Ariz. (MZJ). Unit 1359 stopped flying with Corsair in March.
Amazon may be buying its own feedstock A330-300s for conversion to complement its dry-leased units, as it did with its 767-300 freighters.
The e-tailer announced in October 2022 that it would lease ten A330-300P2Fs from Altavair and assign them to Hawaiian Airlines for CMI service for at least eight years, with the potential for the number of CMI aircraft to grow.
The ten Trent 700-powered A330-300s consist of six 2009- to 2011-vintage units (1071, 1081, 1167, 1205, 1226 and 1245) and four 2018-vintage units (1863, 1865, 1874 and 1902). The first freighter to start flying was unit 1902 in October 2023, becoming the youngest A330 conversion worldwide, while the final unit (1205) entered service in June.
Amazon declined to comment on plans for unit 1359.
Owned 767s join leased units
Unit 1359’s acquisition mirrors Amazon’s move in the second half of 2020 to acquire four ex-WestJet (25246, 25274, 25363 and 25576) and seven ex-Delta 767-300ERs (30388, 30573, 30574, 30575, 30594, 30595 and 32776) that it then sent to IAI for conversion.
Amazon placed two of the ex-WestJet units (25363 and 25576) with Cargojet and the other nine with Air Transport International (ATI), with the last aircraft (32776) beginning CMI service in May 2024.
Still, it is likely that dry leasing will remain an important component in Amazon’s freighter fleet development. In addition to its eleven owned 767-300BDSFs, Amazon has forty-nine 767-300BCFs and -300BDSFs on lease from CAM and Titan Aviation Leasing that it has assigned to ATI, ABX Air and 21 Air.
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