Ameriflight

Ameriflight
IATA ICAO Callsign
A8 AMF AMFLIGHT
Founded 1968
Operating bases
Fleet size 218
Headquarters Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Key people

Jim Martell (Owner, Chairman)

Brian Randow (President, CEO)
Website ameriflight.com

Ameriflight LLC is an American cargo airline with headquarters at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. It is the largest United States FAA Part 135 cargo carrier, operating scheduled and contract cargo services from 19 bases to destinations in 250 cities across 43 US states, as well as Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America. Ameriflight serves major financial institutions, freight forwarders, laboratories and overnight couriers in the US and provides feeder services for overnight express carriers nationwide and internationally.[1] Ameriflight averages 525 daily departures with over 100,000 combined flight hours annually and a 99.5% on-time performance. Ameriflight employs over 700 people (225 pilots, 140 mechanics).

History

Ameriflight was established in 1968 as California Air Charter. It merged in 1971 with United Couriers (UCI), a wholly owned subsidiary of ATI Systems International (ATIS). In April 1993 the fixed-wing division of Wings Express (which was based at Van Nuys Airport) was purchased, and the outstanding shares of Sports Air Travel were acquired in mid-1997. In March 2007, when Canadian company Garda Security bought ATIS, Ameriflight was sold to a group of investors including the company's president, Gary Richards.

In May 2014 the airline announced it was moving its headquarters to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Maintenance operations and flight operations are scheduled to move to DFW.[2]

In late 2014 Ameriflight reached agreement to acquire Wiggins Airways (48 aircraft and 100 employees), which would result in Ameriflight becoming the largest regional air cargo carrier in the world with 218 aircraft in its fleet.[3][4]

Flight services

An Ameriflight Beechcraft Model 99 upon take-off from Mojave Air and Space Port (2009).

The majority of Ameriflight's operations consists of air feeder service for major package express integrators such as UPS, FedEx, and DHL. Other significant customers include Lantheus Medical Imaging, ACS Products, and Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. On schedules set by the customers, cargo is received in the early morning from large jet freighters at hub airports and distributed by Ameriflight airplanes to smaller communities whose traffic (or airports) would not support the big airplanes. In the evening, the Ameriflight aircraft fly back to the hubs, in order to feed them with cargo from the smaller communities, which is carried onwards to the integrators' distribution centers for sorting and redistribution to the ultimate destinations.

Although demand is decreasing as use of digital imaging and electronic data transfer increases, Ameriflight also transports high priority intercity financial documents. Pharmaceuticals, film for development, medical laboratory samples, and other miscellaneous cargo are also carried.

Ameriflight is one of the few Part 135 cargo carriers in the U.S. with a special Department of Transportation permit to carry high Transport Index radioactive cargo, an important element in the company's time-critical radioactive medical raw materials business, which transports radioactive "generator" materials between points of manufacture and cities where it is used to produce materials used in diagnostics and cancer therapy.

In addition to scheduled flying (with contract schedules set by customers), all Ameriflight bases can respond to unscheduled on-demand cargo flights to destinations in Alaska, Canada, throughout the contiguous U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean, and into South America. A single King Air 200 is used for on-demand passenger charter flights.

Main bases and hubs

As of early 2016, Ameriflight's headquarters are at Dallas' Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, with large operations centers at the following 19 bases:

United States
Puerto Rico

Fleet

An Ameriflight EMB-120ER Brasilia rests on the ramp at the company's new DFW Airport headquarters.

The Ameriflight fleet includes the following aircraft (as of August 2016):[5]

Ameriflight Fleet
Aircraft In
Fleet
Orders Passengers Notes
Embraer EMB 120ERF Brasilia 5
Embraer EMB 120RTF Brasilia 4
Total 9

Ameriflight's fleet previously consisted of seven aircraft types with cargo capacities ranging from 1,700 to 8,000 pounds.

They include:

Fleet Total: 218

An Ameriflight Learjet 35 at Bob Hope Airport (2007).

In previous times, the airline operated the following aircraft types:[6] Cessna 402, Cessna 208 Caravan, Dassault Falcon 20, de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter, Learjet 35A, Mitsubishi MU-2, Piper PA-32R, Piper PA-32, Piper PA-28, Piper PA-23 and Piper PA-31T Cheyenne.

Accidents and incidents

References

  1. "Directory: World Airlines". Flight International. 2007-03-27. p. 75.
  2. Murray, Lance and Nicholas Sakelaris. "Cargo carrier Ameriflight to relocate HQ, operations to D/FW Airport." Dallas Business Journal. May 15, 2014. Retrieved on May 16, 2014.
  3. Airliner World: 15. January 2015.
  4. "Wiggins Acquisition Goes Ahead". Airliner World: 14. December 2014.
  5. "Global Airline Guide 2016 (Part Two)". Airliner World (November 2016): 37.
  6. Airline Pilot Central
  7. Ameriflight 1994 crash at the Aviation Safety Network
  8. 1997 accident at the Aviation Safety Network
  9. 1999 crash at the Aviation Safety Network
  10. 2003 accident at the Aviation Safety Network
  11. "Accident Description, Ameriflight 2591." Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved on June 12, 2011.
  12. "NTSB Report SEA06FA068 - 03/18/2009." National Transportation Safety Board. Retrieved on June 12, 2011.
  13. 2007 incident at the Aviation Safety Network
  14. "NTSB Report CEN09CA600 - 09/22/2009." National Transportation Safety Board. Retrieved on June 12, 2011.
  15. "NTSB Report WPR10IA045 - 11/04/2009." National Transportation Safety Board. Retrieved on June 12, 2011.
  16. Plane lands near Show Low after bird strike." The Arizona Republic. Retrieved on June 12, 2011.
  17. 2010 Incident at the Aviation Safety Network
  18. "Cargo plane slides off runway at Boeing Field Archived March 14, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.." Seattle Times. Retrieved on June 12, 2011.
  19. "AMF1951 Flight History 03/11/2011." FlightAware.com. Retrieved on June 12, 2011.
  20. "NTSB Report WPR11FA159 - 03/10/2011." National Transportation Safety Board. Retrieved on June 12, 2011.

External links

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