Management at Dallas/Fort Worth sees the airport as one of the "early beneficiaries" of the creation of Amazon Prime Air, air freight having "skyrocketed" there.
Speaking to FlightGlobal at the World Routes conference in Barcelona on 25 September, DFW's executive vice-president of global strategy and development John Ackerman said domestic cargo volumes has risen 80% in 2016 as Air Transport International (ATI) and Atlas Air transported a monthly average of 4,400 US tons (4,000 metric tonnes) of freight on Amazon's behalf.
Amazon Prime Air began operating last year, sourcing a number of Boeing 767s from Atlas Air and ATI owner Air Transport Services Group.
"We were one of the early beneficiaries of that and we didn't even know it yet," Ackerman says.
Separately, he argues that the Dallas/Fort Worth region should be the "number-one choice" for the US retailer as it considers potential locations for its new headquarters.
Ackerman says Amazon already has 250,000m2 (2.7 million ft2) of warehouses on the airport's property and a further 200,000m2 is located adjacent to the gateway.
He says DFW already has the requisite domestic US routes Amazon is seeking for its new "HQ2", and adds that the Texan facility can also leverage on its international network, which he believes could make it the favoured candidate for the 50,000-employee headquarters.
"They [Amazon] are already a global company and they aren't getting any smaller, so we also need to stress our international network... Some US cities we are competing with don't have nearly the international network that we have," says Ackerman.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
