Amazon.com is facing delayed deliveries of the last four A330-300(P2F)s to be placed with Hawaiian Airlines (HA, Honolulu) by lessor Altavair under a ten-year contract due to issues at Elbe Flugzeugwerke's (EFW) and ST Engineering Aerospace's facilities at San Antonio International and Mobile Downtown airports.
Altavair CEO Steve Rimmer told Freightwaves that the two sites are an "unmitigated disaster". While the conversion specialist acknowledged delays and blamed them on labour shortages, Rimmer said that the shortage was a result of the company's strategic choices.
"They saw an opportunity as Airbus production lines in Mobile started gearing up again to rent labour to Airbus. Conversion customers were clearly left behind in the dust. The skilled labour is there. They've just chosen to allocate it to other higher-yielding things," Rimmer said.
Asked by ch-aviation, Altavair did not comment any further.
EFW is a 55/45 joint venture of ST Engineering Aerospace and Airbus.
"We are in close contact and in regular exchange with our direct customers, and also with the future operators of the aircraft. We are working closely together to enable redeliveries according to project planning," an EFW spokesperson said.
Amazon.com signed an agreement with Hawaiian Airlines covering ten A330-300(P2F)s in October 2022. All ten aircraft were originally scheduled for redelivery, after conversion by EFW and on leases from Altavair, by the end of 2024. So far, only six are in service.
Hawaiian Airlines refused to comment on the delivery pipeline, while Amazon did not respond to ch-aviation's request for comment.
The ch-aviation fleets ownership shows that Altavair owns four A330-300s currently under conversion by EFW at the Dresden (two), Shanghai Pudong, and Guangzhou sites. There are currently no A330-300s undergoing conversion at either the Mobile or San Antonio sites.
