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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

> [Amazon] plans to launch its first ever branded cargo plane, the Amazon One, at Seattle’s SeaFair Air Show on Friday. The plane is a a Boeing 767-300 operated by Atlas Air, an existing provider of air cargo services for Amazon.com.

Unless I'm missing something, the only new thing here is the paint on the plane.

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> Unless I'm missing something, the only new thing here is the paint on the plane.

Amazon has committed to buy a 20% stake in Atlas with options to expand to 30%

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/atlas-air-grants-amazon-war...

The ownership stake in Atlas with Amazon is interesting to me.

Amazon was contracting with Air Transport Services Group (Airborne Express/DHL US, for those keeping track at home) for flights into and out of Wilmington for an air sort program. Amazon must have crunched the numbers on what they were paying to FedEx and UPS and realized that they could lease planes for what they were paying for someone else to do the deliveries...

40 Aircraft pushing packages from one corner of the globe to another? This means that they can cut their logistics costs (or, alternatively, move them in house from an external vendor, giving them more control) and be able to fine-tune delivery.

> Unless I'm missing something, the only new thing here is the paint on the plane.

In some respects, yes. In other respects, seen any other tech companies painting their logos onto cargo planes recently?

It is an indicator of the way in which Amazon is progressively controlling more and more of their business functions around shipping.

>> "In other respects, seen any other tech companies painting their logos onto cargo planes recently?"

Why would they? Amazon's entire business is reliant on shipping and their USP is basically, you can get anything shipped to you quickly. What other tech company has a requirement like this?

Maybe not tech company, but Walmart just bought Jet.com, and Target has also been trying to get into the online business.

I guess all retailers will try to catch up to Amazon, but there's 20 years or experience and literally billions of investment to recreate.

Even if Walmart (or others) tried to invest enough to catch up, I'm not convinced there are enough engineers (with relevant experience) available! They'd have to poach from Amazon. :)

> Maybe not tech company, but Walmart just bought Jet.com

Nope, Walmart is reportedly in talks to buy Jet.com.

The registration, too. I looked up the tail number to see what I could find out about the history of the airframe, because I'm a huge nerd like that, and the only prior aircraft with that number was a hot air balloon that crashed twenty years ago. The current registration is dated July 26.

The tail number is a prime number (in reference to Prime customers) and is also the year AMZN went public.

I totally missed that. Good eye!

Yeah but why ruin a good headline?

With the number of airlines who lease their planes from holding companies, it's actually quite similar to what in the rest of the industry would be "launching" their own service. The pilots can just be considered agency ones, and they'll get to decide more on routes, holding and slots.

Not entirely true. Looks like they also get a lot more control over the fleet now. This will allow them to ship with greater flexibility and for cheaper rates.

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