By Elena Vasquez

Amazon has added two new airfreight services out of China, a move that will direct additional e-commerce-linked cargo into its own controlled capacity rather than the open charter and belly-hold market.

The services, first reported by Air Cargo News, extend Amazon's Amazon Air network into one of the world's most contested air cargo corridors. The retailer's growing footprint matters to freight buyers and operators because it shifts volume, schedule reliability and pricing power on lanes that shippers, forwarders and competing carriers all depend on.

What does Amazon Air actually do?

Amazon Air launched in 2016 with a fleet of about 40 leased Boeing 767 freighters, operating primarily inside the United States to support the company's own fulfillment network. Over the following years, the operation expanded to roughly 90 aircraft in active service, with the retailer publicly targeting a fleet of more than 200 aircraft, owned, leased or partner-flown, by the late 2020s.

The network's original job was simple: move parcels between Amazon sortation hubs. The strategic question over the past three years has been how much of that operation Amazon converts into a sellable freight product for third-party merchants and how much it keeps internal.

Why China, and why now?

China has been the single largest source of cross-border e-commerce tonnage flowing into North America and Europe. The country accounts for the majority of Amazon's third-party seller inventory, much of it routed through Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Airfreight economics on this corridor have tilted toward air for the past three years. Sea transit from southern China to the U.S. West Coast averaged 16 to 20 days under normal conditions in 2024, but reliability slipped during peak season. That pushed fashion, electronics and home goods sellers toward air.

Typical transpacific air transit falls between two and four days at a cost per day that, on high-margin SKUs, beats ocean on inventory carrying cost.

Who feels the new capacity first?

For Chinese freight forwarders and direct-to-consumer sellers, the addition of Amazon-operated services offers a new captive-capacity option. It arrives at a time when belly-hold space on Cathay Pacific, China Airlines and Air China is routinely sold out weeks in advance during the September-to-December peak.

A portion of that demand can now flow into Amazon's own metal rather than compete for it on the open market.

For incumbent carriers on the China-North America and China-Europe corridors, the competitive pressure is incremental rather than disruptive. Amazon's services are most likely to absorb volume that already moved under the Amazon Logistics banner, with smaller spillover into the spot charter market.

What should shippers watch?

The headline-grabbing question is route. The new services could connect mainland China and Hong Kong gateways to U.S. gateways such as Anchorage, Cincinnati, Fort Worth or Wilmington, where Amazon Air operates primary hubs, or they could feed European hubs in Leipzig and Coventry.

Watch for Amazon to publish weekly frequencies, aircraft types and effective dates in the weeks ahead. The first capacity additions typically appear on rate sheets two to four weeks before the first scheduled flight, giving forwarders a narrow window to reassign bookings.

If the new services grow to the scale of Amazon Air's domestic U.S. operation, peak-season transpacific rates could see measurable softening in 2025 as Amazon internalizes demand that previously competed for the same freighters and belly space.