HOTR: Amazon to add A330 P2F to Prime Air fleet

Oct. 21, 2022, © Leeham News: Amazon’s Prime Air will add 10 Airbus A330-300 freighters to its fleet from 2023. The aircraft will be converted by EFW, in which Airbus is a partner, and leased from Altavair of Issaquah (WA).

Source: Airbus.

These are the first A330 freighters that will be operated under the Prime Air brand. Hawaiian Airlines, an A330 operator, will operate the planes. Prime Air largely contracts out flight operations. Atlas Air flies Boeing 767-300ERFs and Sun Country fly Boeing 737Fs for Prime Air.

EFW now has orders for more than 100 A330 conversions, nearly all for the -300 model.

Embraer’s P2F program

Embraer announced this week that it firmed a previously announced deal to convert 10 E190/195 jets to freighters. Nordic Aviation Capital, the owner, previously announced that two of these will go to Astral Aviation of Kenya.

Embraer will convert the airplanes at its Brazilian facilities.

Mammoth gets customer for 777-300ERF

Mammoth Freighters last week announced its first customer for its Boeing 777-300ERMF conversion program. Lithuania’s AviaAM Leasing ordered six conversions. Mammoth’s previous orders have been for the 777-200LRMF.

Mammoth has firm orders for 29 conversions. It says it is nearing commitments for 12 more.

Industry sources tell LNA that settlement talks are underway between Mammoth and the defendants in the theft of trade secrets lawsuit filed by Mammoth and its principals. This follows a federal court ruling denying Mammoth’s request for a preliminary injunction. The court found Mammoth failed to prove any of its claims and concluded that Mammoth would unlikely prevail if the lawsuit went to trial.

29 Comments on “HOTR: Amazon to add A330 P2F to Prime Air fleet

  1. Hawaiian will be the “operator”, does this include maintenance? Because right now, most of their mx is done by Delta Tech Ops under contract, so HAL will need to spool up their capabilities pretty quickly.

  2. Interesting Hawaiian Airlines persons the Airbus A330-300F. I don’t know what their long terms plans are with the 787 coming into service (retiring A330 CEO s?)

  3. Interesting that the AMZN freighters are going to replace those near the end of their operating lives. Bye bye B767??

      • AMAN is a leader in the market, no doubt others would follow. BA is sticking with the past, so many holes in its aircraft lineup

        • @ Pedro
          Not only in its product lineup: BA may soon have some extra holes in its finances — and, perhaps, in its board, also:

          “Passengers in fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes are ‘crime victims,’ US judge says”

          “The families argued the government “lied and violated their rights through a secret process” and asked US District Judge Reed O’Connor to rescind Boeing’s immunity from criminal prosecution – which was part of the $2.5 billion agreement – and order the planemaker publicly arraigned on felony charges.

          “O’Connor ruled on Friday that “in sum, but for Boeing’s criminal conspiracy to defraud the (Federal Aviation Administration), 346 people would not have lost their lives in the crashes.”

          “Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, said the ruling “is a tremendous victory” and “sets the stage for a pivotal hearing, where we will present proposed remedies that will allow criminal prosecution to hold Boeing fully accountable.””

          https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/22/business/boeing-737-max-crime-victims/index.html

      • It also puts AMZN at the driver’s seat in any lease renewal negotiation.

  4. More likely they need extra capacity too and the 767s will be kept going with low usage.

    • Alternatively: the A330 P2Fs are a try-out, with an eye to replacing the 767s — which, at Prime Air, have an average age of 27.6 years.

      • Yes. It’s an available, reliable, efficient aircraft. This program will surely expand.

        The A330 is likely, barring future developments (which is of course silly/guesswork itself), to be the primary dedicated widebody cargo hauler by kg Km’s hauled I’d think, by around 2032 or so…

        • This is just making things worse for Boeing, isn’t it? Whilst they’ve been busily doing nothing substantive about developing a new aircraft (despite years of warning about the demise of the 767), one of their actually successful markets (freighters) could be on the cusp of being swamped by a near endless tide of cheap, effective converted second hand A330s.

          This is also pretty good news for Rolls Royce I’d have thought. There’s a lot of A330ceo with RR engines paying (AFAIK) for power-by-the-hour, which may now keep paying for a lot longer than just their passenger-hauling days. Could be something of a wind fall for RR, getting revenue from engines that had been thought to be on the point of retirement.

      • Another thing there must be a huge feedstock of is Airbus-qualified pilots. Who is learning to fly 767 these days? If it comes to that, who is learning to fly 777?

        And, though it’s a distant option, the A330neo will be trickling down too, meaning that there’s a defacto upgrade path once one tires of A330ceo P2Fs. Ok, so there’s not so many A330neos flying as all that. However, knowing that P2F conversion is a possibility must surely make A330neos more attractive to buy in the first place; once retired from passenger service, there could be good value in the P2F market.

        Parts supply for A330 must be nearly indefinite too, I’d have thought.

  5. On the subject of cargo aircraft, how’s the 777-XF coming along? Any news? Perhaps a few “cartoons” already?

    More pertinently: how’s the certification of the underlying passenger-version 777X coming along? Any sign of a TIA?
    May one assume that BA is currently deploying all available engineering resources to the certification effort for the MAX-7/10? If so, in view of the recent indication that MAX-10 cert probably won’t be occurring until mid-2023 at the earliest, may one assume that cert of the 777X will be commensurately delayed…thus pushing it out to 2026?

    • It’s the unfolding of Congress’ innitiated FAA Streamlining, delegation of certification from 2012.

      The renewed grandfathering of design and requirements 2012-2018. Specially for the 737 MAX and 777x programs, engineered in that time window.

      It doesn’t go away until fixed.

    • @Bryce

      Good question’s! Most of us know the answer now don’t we.
      Boeing’s earnings call (or lack there of) for the 3 qtr is coming this week. Gonna be interesting to see what smoke and mirrors will be forthcoming from the executives on these questions.
      They show no leadership for the future on freighters.

      • @ Airdoc
        FAA letters are the only real source of info on the goings-on at BA these days: it’s a good job we get them from time to time, to save us from the thick blanket of smoke.

        Incidentally, the current analyst consensus is for another loss — this time 8ct per share (before any extra writedowns, e.g. on defense programs).

    • you have to split the acronym.

      777-200LR MF ( as in Mammoth Freighter )
      777-300ER MF ( dito )
      ?

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