Left to right is: Sam Phillips (Station Supervisor, AMZ), Migdoel Ocasio (Station Supervisor, AMZ), Kimberly Smith (Station Manager, AMZ) and Richard Bartlett (Station Supervisor, AMZ).
Atlas Air’s partnership with Amazon hit a new milestone in August when the ecommerce giant opened its newest and largest air hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG).
Atlas operates four daily flights from the hub, which serves as the nucleus of Amazon’s U.S. air cargo business spanning more than 40 airports nationwide. All four of the Atlas flights are identified by the call letters KCVG.
Atlas Air’s relationship with Amazon began in 2016, with a 10-year agreement to operate 20 B767 300 aircraft. Atlas and Southern Air are among five airlines operating flights for Amazon Air, the cargo airline operating exclusively to transport Amazon packages
Kim Smith, Station Manager, Ground Operations at CVG, manages the day-to-day operations at the hub for Atlas, where she oversees a team of 16 employees working on 747s, 767s, 737 and 777s.
“My team is very excited about the new hub,” Kim said. “It’s been a fantastic experience for the Atlas and Amazon ground crews to work together and collaborate.”
Profile of a Prime Air plane during the day.
The hub is currently in a soft-opening phase, limited to domestic-only day shift flights, primarily serving the West Coast. Amazon plans to be up and running 24/7 withinternational flights by March 2022. The hub has the capacity to handle up to 100 flights and millions of packages each week.
The $1.5 billion air hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport blends state-of-the-art robotics technology with a team of up to 2,000 employees to deliver packages at lightning-fast speeds. Amazon’s investment has created more than 18,000 jobs in Kentucky.
According to an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer (available to subscribers), the hub uses hundreds of mobile robots resembling supersized Roombas with loading decks on top to help sort and deliver packages, which according to Amazon, transports packages across a facility three football stadiums in size.
Front view of a Prime Air plane in the evening.
“I love seeing growth in the aviation industry,” Kim said. “It’s been very satisfying to watch the operation grow bigger each day.”
