Air Cargo construction booming

Amazon Air, other carriers delivering more goods, faster

HEBRON, KY.» Since the pandemic started nearly a year ago, 15,000 fewer people arrive and depart daily from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, known as CVG. Yet the 60% drop in passenger traffic is not so apparent on the airport’s four runways, which are handling a record amount of air cargo — nearly 4,000 tons a day.

Ranked by the Federal Aviation Administration as the nation’s sixth-largest cargo airport, CVG’s standing is about to climb.

Amazon Air, the e-commerce giant’s 5-year-old cargo airline, is completing a 798,000-square-foot sorting center, seven-level parking structure and acres of freshly poured concrete to accommodate 20 aircraft. The new facility, under construction on a 640-acre site along the airport’s southern boundary, is scheduled to open in the fall. It represents about a third of the $1.5 billion, 3 million-squarefoot air cargo hub Amazon is committed to building at CVG.

“This hub is going to let us to get packages to customers faster,” Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and chief executive, said during the groundbreaking ceremony at CVG in May 2019. “That’s a big deal.”

By far the largest air cargo construction project in the airport’s 74-year history, the mile-long facility will be the center of Amazon Air’s national air transport network, which now has more than 70 aircraft and hundreds of daily flights to 35 other cities in the United States. Last week, Amazon

announced the purchase of 11 Boeing 767-300 aircraft as part of an effort to expand its fleet.

The new building is a signal measure of Amazon’s influence as the largest online retailer and its dedication to fast delivery. Both have helped generate a wave of air cargo construction at airports across the United States.

FedEx, the world’s largest air cargo carrier, handled an average of 6.2 million air packages a day last year, a 48% increase over 2016. The company just opened a $290 million, 51-acre project at the Ontario International Airport in Southern California. It features a 251,000-square-foot sorting facility, spacious concrete ramps, nine gates, 18 truck loading docks and the capacity to handle 12,000 packages an hour.

UPS and Amazon also operate out of older buildings at the airport, which is handling 30% more cargo than it did in 2019. “There is a lot of consumer behavior that permanently changed in 2020,” said Mark A. Thorpe, the airport’s chief executive. “We’re seeing levels of cargo today that were expected in 2028.”

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, the second-larg

est air cargo airport in the United States after Memphis International Airport, is planning for $500 million in new freight and package handling and sorting facilities. The demand for more space by the airport’s cargo companies — among them Alaska Cargo & Cold Storage, 6A Aviation, FedEx, UPS and Amazon — is soaring. As of the end of September 2020, the airport reported that 2.3 million tons of cargo had touched down in Alaska, a 9% increase over the same nine-month period in 2019.

At Chicago Rockford International, plans are underway to build a 90,000square-foot cargo facility. As soon as it opens in the spring, the airport will start another 100,000-squarefoot cargo project for DB Schenker, Emery Air and Senator International. Last year, Rockford completed a $22.3 million, 192,000square-foot facility for Amazon, along with $14 million in concrete aprons sturdy enough for Boeing 747 aircraft.

“The traffic in cargo is responsible for all the new demand at airports now,” said Rex J. Edwards, an industry analyst and vice president of the Campbell-Hill Aviation Group, a Northern Virginia consulting firm. “The cargo carriers want more airport space. They need room to park planes and facilities that meet next-day delivery requirements. That is the evolution of the business now.”

Before the pandemic, ecommerce sales were growing more than 10% annually, pushing total air cargo to 12 million tons last year, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, a unit of the Transportation Department. Federal analysts project that air cargo will reach 45 million tons annually by midcentury. But executives at big air shippers, airports and airplane manufacturers say that the pandemic altered online commerce so substantially that the industry will hit that mark a decade sooner.

Three years ago, Philadelphia International Airport paid $54.5 million for 135 undeveloped acres next to the airfield. The airport is now developing a master plan for the ground that includes 1.5 million square feet of cargo handling facilities. “We knew, prepandemic, that cargo was only going to increase,” said Stephanie Wear, the airport’s director of air service development and cargo services.