Amazon appears to be pressing on with European flights, fuelling rumours that it is planning its own air logistics operation in the region.
An industry source told CEP-Research today that the flights are continuing.
Earlier reports suggested that the flights – five to six per week – operated by a B737 chartered from ASL Aviation France and linking Poland, the UK and Germany – had ended before Christmas and whose sole purpose had been to provide supplemental capacity at a time of peak demand.
ASL Aviation has declined to comment while at the time of going to press Amazon had not replied to questions emailed to their corporate HQ in the US.
Meanwhile, the online retail giant has turned in some impressive numbers for 2015. Yesterday it announced that more than 23 million items were ordered worldwide from sellers on Amazon on Cyber Monday, a more than 40% increase year-over-year.
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) the third-party/3PL logistics service for other merchants selling through Amazon, delivered more than 1 billion items worldwide in 2015 while Sponsored Products adoption by sellers worldwide grew more than 100% year-over-year “as sellers advertised their products and built their brands on Amazon.” During the holiday season, individuals and businesses selling on Amazon sold to more than 80% of Amazon customers worldwide who ordered a physical item, it added.
“It’s never been easier for sellers, local merchants and artisans to grow their businesses on Amazon. With targeted advertising tools like Sponsored Products, access to Amazon’s fulfilment and customer service expertise through FBA, and new marketplaces like Handmade at Amazon and Amazon Home Services, businesses of all sizes can easily reach millions of customers around the world,” said Peter Faricy, VP for Amazon Marketplace.
Active sellers worldwide using the FBA service grew more than 50% year-over-year with orders from Amazon sellers from more than 100 different countries around the world fulfilled to customers in 185 countries, the company said. Cross-border sellers worldwide using FBA grew more than 100% year-over-year, it added.
The recent holiday season was also a record-breaker for same-day service Amazon Prime, the company's fastest delivery option. “More than three million members worldwide joined Prime during the third week of December, bringing milestone growth” to the membership programme which offers unlimited Free Two-Day shipping, Free Same-Day Delivery, superfast free two-hour delivery via Prime Now in more than 20 metro areas,” Amazon said.
Over 200 million more items shipped for free with Prime this holiday season and a record number of units were shipped worldwide.
Amazon has enjoyed a successful 2015 in the UK where Black Friday was its busiest-ever day in the country with more than 7.4 million items ordered in a single day, UK country manager Christopher North, revealed in the unit's Winter 2015 Report. “The selection of products on Amazon.co.uk continues to increase with more than 150 million products now available. This scale of selection simply would not be possible if it was not for the tens of thousands of British businesses who offer their products on Amazon.co.uk via the Amazon Marketplace.
“The last 12 months have seen our greatest advances in fast delivery to date. Ten years ago, the typical delivery took as long as a week; today, Amazon Prime customers regard One-Day delivery as the norm,” he added.
Amazon.co.uk operates a total of 10 fulfilment centres, of which two opened in 2015 at Dunstable and Doncaster, as well as 24 delivery stations across the country. It uses more than 90 independent delivery companies employing more than 7,000 drivers to deliver parcels to more than 13,000 pick-up locations-
