Amazon hasn’t slowed down on delivering products or building facilities to help meet demand. With the holiday season coming up, the company announced it plans to hire an additional 100,000 full and part-time employees throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Of those, 1,700 are in the Austin metro area.
“We’re always investing when it comes to supporting customers, so we’ve opened 75 new fulfillment centers, sortation centers and delivery stations like this one this year,” said Amazon Spokesperson Betsy Harden, who gave KVUE an inside look at their delivery station in South Austin on Monday. “And we’ll be opening several hundred more before the year is over to help serve our customers during the peak holiday season.”
Amazon’s cargo airline started flying to and from the airport in May, which will help customers continue to have fast, free shipping.
f you’ve noticed a change in how fast your Amazon deliveries might be arriving, there could be a reason for that.
Earlier this summer, Amazon started flying packages to Austin’s airport on its cargo airline, Amazon Air.
“It means (customers) have that fast, free shipping delivery and can count on Amazon to meet that,” said Chris Preston, director of operations for Amazon Air.
Previously, the closest Amazon Air deliveries went to Kelly Field in San Antonio. The Austin operation is Amazon’s fourth in Texas. The other three are in Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio.
According to data from Austin’s airport, Amazon flew nearly 2.5 million pounds of packages in May when the cargo carrier launched. That number spiked 158% in June to 6.4 million pounds and increased more in July to 7.1 million pounds.
Amazon Air is now poised to pass Federal Express in Austin, the cargo carrier usually leading the way locally. In May, FedEx flew 7.6 million pounds of packages, 7.4 million in June and 7.8 million in July.
Overall, air cargo is up 37% year over year at AUS, even though passenger traffic plummeted 96% locally at the height of the pandemic.