Hawaiian Airlines has taken delivery of the second of 10 Airbus A330-300 passenger-to-freighter conversion (P2F) aircraft, which it plans to operate on Amazon’s behalf.
Chief executive Peter Ingram told FlightGlobal on March 20 that the second A330P2F is in Honolulu for “final procedures with our maintenance team” before it will fly to the mainland US and begin flying cargo for the e-commerce giant.
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He revealed that Hawaiian anticipates operating six A330P2Fs by year’s end and taking delivery of the remaining four throughout 2025.
“The current plan, based on the delivery of aircraft through the cargo-modification process, has us getting to six aeroplanes by the end of the year,” he said. “It’s another opportunity to become more efficient as we’re operating more aircraft and making sure we’re using our crews efficiently.”
In October 2022, Hawaiian agreed to operate “at least” 10 Airbus A330-300 freighters for Amazon while granting it the right to own 15% of Hawaiian Holdings’ stock.
Amazon is leasing the aircraft from Altavair, a lessor with operations in Dublin, London, Seattle, and Singapore. Elbe Flugzeugwerke (EFW), an Airbus-ST Engineering joint venture, is converting them into cargo jets.
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Hawaiian had initially hoped to ramp up to operating ten jets on behalf of Amazon by the end of 2024. But those plans have been derailed by “challenges of our business partner getting aeroplanes delivered through the cargo modification process with their vendor”, Ingram said.
Hawaiian commenced service of its A330-300P2F contract business for Amazon’s Amazon Air brand in October 2023.
“I’m very pleased that our operations were powerful through Amazon’s peak period in the latter part of last year and into the early part of this year,” Ingram said.
The cargo flights add a revenue stream that is not tied to the “ebbs and flows of passenger demand in the airline business”, Ingram said. He added that Hawaiian will “work to see if there’s more opportunities to expand our work with [Amazon] even further”.
Ingram said there are downsides to operating new aircraft, as the company needs to weather the inefficiencies of training personnel on the Boeing 787-9 and A330-300.
“One of the things that will help our bottom line is getting full utilisation of all our aircraft. We’re going to get through that bubble of training that adds a little bit of inefficiency to the airline and get back to where we’re operating on a more steady, measured, consistent basis,” Ingram added.
