Air CargoLast-Mile DeliveryParcel Freight

Amazon breaks ground at Kentucky air hub

· Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Let me tell you about my decade! (Photo: Amazon)

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) broke ground on May 14 at its $1.5 billion air hub at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport.

The airport, located in Hebron, Kentucky, is expected to open in 2021. The 3 million square-foot building will have capacity for 100 freighters and will be built with a 350,000 square-foot loading wing. The hub will support deliveries for Amazon’s “Prime” service, which today guarantees two-day deliveries for millions of items ordered online.

Amazon announced in late April that it will move to a one-day delivery standard for Prime orders. Rival Walmart Inc. began one-day delivery in Phoenix, Arizona, and Las Vegas, Nevada, for goods ordered on its website, Walmart.com.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, chairman and CEO, visited the Hebron facility to make a few remarks.

Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.