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Amazon buys 11 Boeing 767s to expand its cargo fleet

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Re: Amazon buys 11 Boeing 767s to expand its cargo fleet

#81

Post by nickff »

dingaling wrote: post #73
nickff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The A340, A380, 727, 747, and L-1011 existed because of the hub-and-spoke model, and the requirement for a minimum of three engines for transoceanic flights. The 777 was the harbinger of their doom, as it brought ETOPS with it. Somewhat tangentially, there is a (strong) argument that twin-engine aircraft are actually safer than three or four engine aircraft. First, they are at lower risk of having an engine problem (…

> The 777 was the harbinger of their doom, as it brought ETOPS with it. The A300 brought ETOPS, quickly followed by the 767.

My understanding is that the A300 brought the so-called 'early ETOPS', A.K.A. ETOPS-90 and ETOPS-120; 777 brought ETOPS-180.

Re: Amazon buys 11 Boeing 767s to expand its cargo fleet

#82

Post by verhey »

tschwimmer wrote: post #30
notatoad wrote: post #2

per wikipedia, it looks like amazon's current fleet is 66 aircraft, and prior to this news had already ordered 15 additional 767-300ER. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Air

As the other poster noted, these are the first outright purchases of planes, vs previous planes were leased from aircraft leasing companies. My understanding is that when you lease, the leasing company handles all the maintenance and crewing and you only specify the routings. Obviously when you buy planes, you're responsible for everything yourself. You can however contract out maintenance and crewing to other contra…

Generally there's "wet" leases (aircraft + at least one crewmember) and "dry" leases (just the aircraft). There are also different certification requirements between the two lease types. [1]

I believe as of late Amazon has been dry leasing aircraft and contracting with Air Transport International, Atlas, Sun Country, and others for crew and potentially maintenance as well.

[1] https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2020/march/pilo...

Re: Amazon buys 11 Boeing 767s to expand its cargo fleet

#83

Post by nickff »

dingaling wrote: post #76
nickff wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing looked at many possible configurations for the 747, a full-length double-deck among them (photos exist of such a wind tunnel model). The short top deck exists for a variety of reasons, one of the more interesting ones is that the 747 was designed to be faster than later airliners, so the Whitcomb area rule is a factor in its design, especially noticeable in the -400 model, where the top deck ends above the win…

Note that the 400 and 800 freighters kept the short bump because the longer upper deck reduced main deck height and impaired cargo handling. That's also the main reason that passenger 400s are seldom converted to freighters.

Thanks for the info (I did not know that)!

Re: Amazon buys 11 Boeing 767s to expand its cargo fleet

#84

Post by lawguy »

Amazon's air safety record is less than stellar. Prime Air had a fatal 767 incident in early 2019.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AA...

In the accident flight, the first officer (FO) inadvertently activated the "go around" mode during landing, then, in surprise, pushed the airplane into the ground.

> According to one check airman at [FO's previous airline], the FO could explain things well in the briefing room and performed some expected tasks well in the simulator. However, when presented with something unexpected in the simulator, the FO would get extremely flustered and could not respond appropriately to the situation. She said that when the FO did not know what to do, he became extremely anxious and would start pushing a lot of buttons without thinking about what he was pushing, just to be doing something.

Re: Amazon buys 11 Boeing 767s to expand its cargo fleet

#85

Post by mannykannot »

nickff wrote: post #79
mannykannot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are missing the point here, or at least misapplying it. These are minimum figures, but if the four-engined airliners used in transoceanic flights were actually built to have no more reserve power (above the minimum necessary to keep flying) than the 133% you are quoting, they would have always have been less safe from engine failure than contemporary twin-engined airliners (which, in practice, always achi…

Maybe the people at the FAA in the 1950s who wrote the so-called 60-minute rule missed your point, but I don't know what to tell you.

The 60-minute rule does not explain or justify your 133% claim with respect to four-engined aircraft - in fact, it is evidence against it: in practice, four-engined airliners, unlike twins, could tolerate more than a single engine failure.

Re: Amazon buys 11 Boeing 767s to expand its cargo fleet

#86

Post by contingencies »

moltar wrote: post #21

I predicted in October of 2018 [1], that in 3 years Amazon will start flying freight directly from China to US fulfillment centers and cut out the middlemen (FBA sellers). Since then Amazon has been on-boarding sellers in China at a rapid pace. - [1] https://www.scaleleap.com/zine/just-in-time-air/

This is likely a net good for the consumer, since it nominally lowers costs, increases reliability, and reduces time to delivery. However, there is an antitrust risk of monopolization. It's a case in which Amazon, the producer and the consumer have aligned interests, until Amazon turns around and screws everyone who have become dependent. Undercapitalized niche middle men still running on ancient oasis merchant middle man business models are the immediate losers. Bezos, the Genghis Khan of the internet, famously states Your margin is my opportunity. If you are an importer I'd recommend obtaining both exclusivity and patents or running scared.

Re: Amazon buys 11 Boeing 767s to expand its cargo fleet

#87

Post by Symbiote »

bronco21016 wrote: post #78
nixass wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now Ryanair has almost 200 737-800MAX on order, significant amount of these were added during MAX grounding as the prices went down a lot. Bold looking move again, but still shitiest airliner out there

> but still shitiest airliner out there By what metric? Just because of the technical issues? Statistically speaking it will likely end up being the safest variant of the 737 family simply because we live in an era where death in a commercial airline accident is approaching the level of a statistical anomaly. There are many reasons for this that are external to the actual nuts, bolts, and bits of the airplane. Now if…

They meant to write airline. Ryanair charge for cabin bags, charge for water, charge for printing a boarding pass.

But, you can see the price of a flight: https://www.ryanair.com/

Re: Amazon buys 11 Boeing 767s to expand its cargo fleet

#88

Post by chii »

thepace wrote: post #42

I have been wondering about whether there is a limit to how much Amazon can grow in terms of number of industries they can expand into and also how big can they grow in each of those industries. At some point, there will obviously be attempts to create legislations to stop them from growing. Such legislative maneuvers will probably be rendered ineffective by intense lobbying. I think there has be change in consumer b…

> consumer behavior and expectation to stop Amazon at this point

why? if amazon is providing a service that people want (and pay for) at a very competitive price (either by making economies of scale that only they have, nor by leveraging existing business assets they own like AWS), then theres' nothing wrong.

Re: Amazon buys 11 Boeing 767s to expand its cargo fleet

#89

Post by BikiniPrince »

tidepod12 wrote: post #74
discodave wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't "logistics as a service" pretty much what Fulfillment By Amazon is? There is a lot of crossover between FBA, and a UPS or FedEx, but it's not 100%. FBA is basically B2C, as opposed to B2B or C2C. Back during the "peak lockdown" of April/May 2020, a little birdie told me about some of the steps that Amazon was taking to give the warehouses and delivery network a break from the increased demand. In other words,…

>Logistics part of Amazon has expressed a desire to become the "4th flywheel" of Amazon I'm not surprised at all if this is the long term game plan. I'm curious though, what are the first three flywheels? AWS, retail sales, and what? Alexa/Kindle devices? Prime Video? Advertising? All of those seem like strong contenders but I'm not sure they really rival the AWS/retail arms (yet).

Retail, ec2 and digital I would presume. Digital has the kindle, video and other media services.

Re: Amazon buys 11 Boeing 767s to expand its cargo fleet

#90

Post by jackTheMan »

bootlooped wrote: post #75
moltar wrote: post #21

I predicted in October of 2018 [1], that in 3 years Amazon will start flying freight directly from China to US fulfillment centers and cut out the middlemen (FBA sellers). Since then Amazon has been on-boarding sellers in China at a rapid pace. - [1] https://www.scaleleap.com/zine/just-in-time-air/

Isn't this essentially what they're doing with Amazon Basics and probably almost every other Amazon-owned brand? They will let sellers scout products, and then squeeze them out after they have a product that's proven to move. It's better for Amazon this way, you can externalize lots of risk while still making a fat commission + assorted fees.

Moreover they have the data (which product sells/returns and where) to optimize the priorities of entries that no other seller has.
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