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Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

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

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Of note, all of those 66 planes are leased from and operated by other cargo airlines, like Atlas Air. Amazon doesn't own the planes or employ the pilots, they just lease the ability to paint the Amazon logo on the side and have the planes fly routes they choose.

It's unclear if the planes mentioned in the OP are talking about Amazon actually outright purchasing planes (which would be a first) or if they are just leasing more.

edit: Actually the article does say this at the bottom:

>Amazon launched its own air cargo fleet in 2016 and, prior to Tuesday's news, the company leased 80 planes, but the move is the first time the company has bought their own

Leasing is standard procedure in the industry. There is no point tying up billions in planes when those dollars could be more productive elsewhere.

These were probably not leased because they were very cheap and had relatively little future value, making them unattractive for leasing companies.

I wonder if this means they'll be hiring their own pilots? Or are they buying the aircraft and then leasing them out to an air freight company to handle the operations? Basically the same situation but better for Amazon's taxes.

Bloomberg confirmed that the purchased planes will be operated by contractors.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-05/amazon-ma...

They'll almost certainly have another company handling operations and maintenance.

What's the point of painting the planes in your own colors?

It impresses the other billionaires.

Playing the stock market game.

The same as putting your name on a skyscraper. Whenever you are over a city or landing with your private jet, you can always tell the guy sitting in front of you: oh,look, there they are! Remember I told you I bought 12 new Boeings?

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 contractors.

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...

That's not how this sort of leasing generally works, it's more of a financial transaction, like financing a car.

Airlines are more likely to buy packages of service from manufacturers (especially engines) and big service providers if they don't have enough scale or experience to do their own maintenance, regardless of how it was paid for.

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