Rumours abound on the internet that four Boeing 767s have been contracted to fly out of Wilmington Air Park in Ohio to various locations in the US, and that the client may be Amazon.

The project is widely held to be called ‘Aerosmith’ and is operated by Air Transport Services Group (ATSG). Flights from the cargo only airport have been found to be headed to Tampa FL, Ontario, CA, Oakland CA, and Allentown, PA.

Amazon has been consolidating its road delivery network and withdrawing major contracts from clients such as Royal Mail in recent years in favour of employing its own drivers and delivering direct to customers in a number of countries including the UK.

It is well known that Amazon had difficulties with UPS for its air delivery service over the last year or so and this may be a move to cut out the middleman. With the huge growth of the company and habit of taking services in house to improve its supply chain, this would point to the idea of the online giant being capable of running domestic air cargo services in the US, and potentially across the EU in future. The EU has multiple metropolitan centres as with the US and could handle a new air cargo service across the 28 member states.

Rumours originally emerged from a website with a good record in getting the story first, though Amazon has been approached by a number of media outlets and has remained steadfastly tight lipped as to whether or not this may be happening.

Wilmington Air Park has been used as an air cargo hub before by DHL but after the company left some years ago its warehouses have lain largely empty. This may well be just the place for a new air cargo operation to emerge that will hit the international overnight express market hard as Amazon flies its own goods across the US.