ABX Air

ABX Air
IATA
GB
ICAO
ABX
Callsign
ABEX
Founded 1980
Fleet size 41
Destinations 183
Parent company Air Transport Services Group, Inc.
Headquarters Airborne Airpark
Clinton County, Ohio
Key people Joe Hete (CEO), John Graber (President), Quint Turner (Chief Financial Officer)
Website abxair.com

ABX Air, Inc., formerly Airborne Express, is a cargo airline headquartered at Wilmington Air Park (formerly Airborne Airpark) in unincorporated Clinton County, Ohio, United States, near the City of Wilmington.[1] ABX Air operates scheduled, ad hoc charter and ACMI freight services. It also provides flight support services and training. ABX Air is owned by Air Transport Services Group (NASDAQATSG).

ABX Air's main customer is DHL, and the vast majority of the freight it carries is for that company. Most of ABX Air's aircraft are painted with DHL's yellow and red livery.

ABX also does cargo flights on behalf of Air Jamaica between Miami and the two Jamaican cities of Montego Bay (Donald Sangster International Airport) and Kingston (Norman Manley International Airport). One of their Boeing 767-200s routinely handles the flights, replacing the Douglas DC-8 types that flew previously. The aircraft fly with an Air Jamaica callsign of "Jamaica".

Contents

History

The airline was established in 1980 when Airborne Freight acquired Midwest Air Charter. It started operations on 17 April 1980. Airborne Express, as the airline was initially named, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Airborne Freight of Seattle.[2] ABX became a public company on 16 August 2003 as part of the merger of DHL and Airborne, in which DHL kept Airborne's ground operations and spun off its air operations as ABX Air Inc. ABX Air's common shares were traded on the NASDAQ National Market under the ticker symbol ABXA. In early 2007, ABX Air entered an ACMI agreement with All Nippon Airways to begin flying freight within Asia. The contract utilized two Boeing 767-200SF aircraft.[3] In March 2007, the airline had 7,600 employees.[2]

On 2 November 2007, CEO Joe Hete and the ABX Air board of directors announced that the company had entered into an agreement to acquire Cargo Holdings International, the parent company of Air Transport International (ATI) and Capital Cargo International Airlines for a cost of $350 million. The transaction was finalized on 31 December 2007,[4] and ABX Air was reorganized as a subsidiary of a holding company, later named Air Transport Services Group (ATSG).[5]

On November 10, 2008, ABX Air's largest customer, DHL, announced a plan to exit the United States domestic market.[6] Previous plans by DHL had been to keep its U.S. operations by contracting them out to United Parcel Service.[7] On 30 March 2010, ABX Air's parent company, ATSG, entered into new long-term agreements with DHL, under which ABX Air would continue providing airlift for the U.S. portion of DHL’s international network.[8]

Fleet

As of January 2011, the ABX Air fleet consists of the following aircraft[9]:

ABX Air Fleet
Aircraft Total Notes
Boeing 767-200 39
Boeing 767-300 3

Incidents and Accidents

On December 22, 1996, an Airborne Express DC-8-63F operating as Flight 827 conducted a test flight after undergoing modifications at Piedmont Triad International Airport. While performing a stall test the airplane entered into a real stall and the flight crew was unable to recover it before it crashed into mountainous terrain near Narrows, Virginia. All six occupants were killed.[10]

On June 29, 2008, a week after the airline received a threat, a Boeing 767 parked at San Francisco International Airport was seriously damaged by fire as it was being prepared for flight. An investigation by the NTSB revealed that a design fault was to blame for the fire, allowing a short circuit between electric wiring and an electrically conductive component of the oxygen system.[11]

References

External links

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