ABX Air

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US cargo airline

title: "ABX Air" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1980-establishments-in-ohio", "airlines-based-in-ohio", "airlines-established-in-1980", "american-companies-established-in-1980", "cargo-airlines-of-the-united-states"] description: "US cargo airline" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_Air" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary US cargo airline ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox airline"]

FieldValue
airlineABX Air
Airborne Express
Midwest Air Charter
logoLogo ABX Air.svg
imageN219CY Boeing 767-383ER(BDS) ABX Air LHR 12.1.22.jpg
image_size280
captionAn ABX Air Boeing 767-300F
IATAGB
ICAOABX
callsignABEX
parentAir Transport Services Group, Inc.
Airborne
Airborne Freight Corporation
founded
aocABXA001A
headquartersWilmington Air Park
Clinton County, Ohio, U.S.
key_people
hubs{{ubl
*Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport<ref namehubsabx
* Miami International Airport<ref namehubsabx/
fleet_size33
website
::

| airline = ABX Air Airborne Express Midwest Air Charter | logo = Logo ABX Air.svg | image = N219CY Boeing 767-383ER(BDS) ABX Air LHR 12.1.22.jpg | image_size = 280 | caption = An ABX Air Boeing 767-300F | IATA = GB | ICAO = ABX | callsign = ABEX | parent = Air Transport Services Group, Inc. Airborne Airborne Freight Corporation | founded = | aoc = ABXA001A | headquarters = Wilmington Air Park Clinton County, Ohio, U.S. | key_people = | hubs = {{ubl|

ABX Air, Inc. is an American cargo airline headquartered at Wilmington Air Park near Wilmington, Ohio. ABX Air operates scheduled, ad hoc charter and ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance) freight services. It also provides flight support services and training. ABX Air is owned by Air Transport Services Group.

The airline was incorporated as Midwest Air Charter (MAC) in 1970. MAC was originally best known for flying cancelled checks for banks, including, starting in 1972, the United States Federal Reserve Bank. Airborne Freight Corporation (ABF) started to charter MAC aircraft in 1976. In 1978, MAC took control of the airport at Wilmington, Ohio. In 1980, ABF bought MAC and its name to Airborne Express as part of transitioning to becoming an integrated package delivery service in competition with Federal Express, using Wilmington as its hub. In 1985, ABF adopted "Airborne Express" as its trade name and in 1989 changed the name of the airline to ABX Air to eliminate confusion with the parent's trade name. In the 1990s, ABX Air was one of the top 10 all-cargo airlines in the world by ton-miles carried. In 2003, DHL bought ABF, then named simply Airborne, spinning off ABX Air because, as a foreign-owned company, DHL could not own a US carrier.

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

ABX also operated 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 handled the flights, replacing the Douglas DC-8 types that flew previously. The aircraft flew with an Air Jamaica callsign of "Jamaica".

History

Midwest Air Charter

Midwest Air Charter (MAC) incorporated in Ohio at the end of 1970. MAC flew cashed checks for Ohio banks before starting doing the same for the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank in 1972, a measure that reduced float. MAC was based at Elyria, Ohio and flew from Lorain County Airport until 1978 when it bought the airport at Wilmington, Ohio. MAC was originally classified as an air taxi, escaping the regulations of the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the now-defunct Federal agency that, at the time, tightly regulated almost all US commercial air transport, by flying small aircraft. On 9 January 1978, the CAB granted MAC an all-cargo certificate allowing it to fly cargo between any two points in the US per the terms of the Air Cargo Deregulation Act of 1977.

In October 1976, MAC started flying on behalf of Seattle-based Airborne Freight Corporation (ABF), an air freight forwarder between 35 airports. In the 1970s, passenger airlines started withdrawing freighter aircraft from their fleets, leaving air freight forwarders without the overnight cargo flights that they needed. ABF was thus driven to chartering capacity from MAC. The need for ABF's own freight flights only increased with the advent of Federal Express and the 1977 US air cargo deregulation and ABF came to increasingly rely on MAC. In December 1978 ABF bought 9.5% of MAC. In 1979, ABF bought its own aircraft for MAC to fly. By year end 1979, MAC had 54 aircraft and was flying to 76 airports and accounted for over half of ABF's shipments.

ABF replaced management and renamed the airline Airborne Express. Prior to its sale, MAC was doing business under the name "Midwest Charter Express", also the name of its corporate parent. MAC was controlled by M.J. Garrihy and Gilbert Singerman, who also controlled Wright Air Lines, a Cleveland-based regional carrier. MAC had some unusual fleet types, including the West German Hansa Jet and the French Caravelle. See Fleet. ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Former_Airborne_Express_(Midwest_Air_Charter)_Caravelle_on_display_at_New_England_Air_Museum.jpg" caption="Caravelle]] on display at [[New England Air Museum"] ::

Airborne Express

Airborne Express rationalized MAC: it inherited a fleet of 54 aircraft across 13 types which it reduced initially to Caravelles, Cessna Citations, Piper Navajos, NAMC YS-11s and Douglas DC-9s. It also exited the Federal Reserve contract which had timings incompatible with the package express business. By 1982, it slimmed the fleet to YS-11s and DC-9s (see Fleet). It added DC-8s in 1986. A characteristic of Airborne Express was its use of so-called C-containers, introduced in 1985 to fit through aircraft passenger doors, eliminating the expense of cutting a cargo door in the side of an aircraft. C-containers continued to be used even once the airline acquired 767s in the 1990s.

ABX Air

In early 1989, Airborne Express was re-named ABX Air, to eliminate possible confusion between "Airborne Express" the tradename for the whole company and the airline itself.

Apart from its core activity of cargo transportation, Airborne Express also performed airframe maintenance services to a number of aircraft types. By , the company had 5,500 employees. In , the company acquired Boeing 767 aircraft for conversion to freighters. In 1996, the airline ranked number 9 among global all-cargo airlines by ton-miles carried.

ABX became a public company on August 16, 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. In March 2007, the airline had 7,600 employees.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/ABX_Air.svg" caption="Previous logo until 2021."] ::

On November 2, 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 December 31, 2007, and ABX Air was reorganized as a subsidiary of a holding company, later named Air Transport Services Group (ATSG). On November 10, 2008, ABX Air's largest customer, DHL, announced a plan to exit the United States domestic market. Previous plans by DHL had been to keep its U.S. operations by contracting them out to United Parcel Service. On March 30, 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.

Fleet

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/ABX_Air_Boeing_767-232(BDSF)_N747AX_MIA_2013-2-12.png" caption="short final]] to Miami International Airport in 2013."] ::

, the ABX Air fleet consists of the following aircraft:

::data[format=table title="ABX Air Fleet"]

AircraftIn FleetTotal33
Boeing 767-200BDSF8
Boeing 767-300BDSF25
::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/N362CM_Boeing_767F_ABX_Air_(7937462758).jpg" caption="An ABX Air Boeing 767-300F"] ::

Historic fleet

World Airline Fleets 1979 (copyright 1979) shows Midwest Air Charter with:

Airborne Express fleet year-end 1982:

JP fleets 1989 (copyright May 1989) shows Airborne Express with:

ABX Air operated the following equipment throughout its history:

Incidents and accidents

Airborne Express has experienced seven accidents, with six of them being hull losses, and two resulting in fatalities.

References

Sources

  • {{cite news |work=Air Transport Services Group, Inc. |title=ABX Holdings Announces Name Change to Air Transport Services Group |url=http://www.abxair.com/atsg/pr2008-05-16.html |date=May 16, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080601104940/http://www.abxair.com/atsg/pr2008-05-16.html |archive-date=June 1, 2008 }}

References

  1. (May 1989). "JP airline-fleets international 89". Bucher Publications.
  2. (20 July 1995). "Change 4 to Order 7310.1N, Contractions". Federal Aviation Administration.
  3. "Federal Aviation Administration - Airline Certificate Information - Detail View".
  4. "About ABX Air".
  5. "About Us".
  6. "[http://ci.wilmington.oh.us/images/map-small.jpg Zoning Map] {{webarchive. link. (October 30, 2008 ." ''City of Wilmington''.)
  7. (1 February 1980). "Contractions". [[Federal Aviation Administration]].
  8. "Search results for "Midwest Air Charter"".
  9. (27 July 1972). "Check-writing habits in for change". Cleveland Press.
  10. (29 September 1978). "Air cargo company buys facilities at air park". Wilmington News-Journal.
  11. [[Federal Aviation Administration]]. (1977). "FAA Statistical Handbook". U.S. Government Printing Office.
  12. (October 1977 – January 1978). "All-Cargo Air Service Certificates". U.S. Government Printing Office.
  13. (1979). "Airborne Annual Report 1979". Airborne Freight Corporation.
  14. (1985). "Interview with Holt Webster #5". Museum of History & Industry.
  15. (1980). "Annual Report". Airborne Freight Corporation.
  16. (6 July 1979). "Civil Aeronautics Board, [Docket 32947; Order 79-6-184] Wright Air Lines, Inc,; Order To Show Cause; Application for Control and Interlocking Relationships". Federal Register.
  17. (15 December 1980). "Airborne Heightens Competitive Effort". Aviation Week and Space Technology.
  18. (1982). "Annual Report". Airborne Freight Corporation.
  19. (1985). "Annual Report 1985". Airborne Express.
  20. (13 January 1997). "Airfreight Market Is Expanding". Aviation Week and Space Technology.
  21. (27 January 1989). "ABX Air ad". Wilmington News-Journal.
  22. (12 January 1998). "All-Cargo Airlines". Aviation Week & Space Technology.
  23. (March 27, 2007). "Directory: World Airlines". [[Flight International]].
  24. "ATSG : Air Transport Services Group, Inc".
  25. "ABX Air, Form 10-Q, Quarterly Report, Filing Date Nov 14, 2008".
  26. [http://atsginc.com/pr2010-03-30.html Air Transport Services Group, Inc] {{webarchive. link. (July 7, 2010)
  27. "Our fleet".
  28. Endres, Günter G.. (1979). "World Airline Fleets 1979". Airline Publications and Sales.
  29. Ranter, Harro. "Aviation Safety Network > ASN Aviation Safety Database > Operator index > United States of America > Airborne Express".
  30. Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident Carstedt Jet Liner 600F N906MW Saint Louis-Lambert International Airport, MO (STL)".
  31. Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident Sud Aviation SE-210 Caravelle VI-R N905MW Atlanta Municipal Airport, GA (ATL)".
  32. Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident McDonnell Douglas DC-9-15 N926AX Philadelphia International Airport, PA (PHL)".
  33. Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident McDonnell Douglas DC-9-31 N908AX Newburgh-Stewart Airport, NY (SWF)".
  34. Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident Cessna 208B Grand Caravan N4688B Burlington International Airport, VT (BTV)".
  35. Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident NAMC YS-11A-205 N918AX Wilmington-Airborne Airpark, OH (ILN)".
  36. (15 July 1997). "Uncontrolled Flight into Terrain, ABX Air (Airborne Express) Douglas DC-8-63, N827AX, Narrows, Virginia, December 22, 1996". [[National Transportation Safety Board]].
  37. (30 June 2009). "Ground Fire Aboard Cargo Airplane, ABX Air Flight 1611, Boeing 767-200, N799AX, San Francisco, California, June 28, 2008". [[National Transportation Safety Board]].
  38. (May 1, 2007). "ABX Air Enters Into a Watershed ACMI Agreement With All Nippon Airways Co.". ABX Air, Inc..
  39. (December 31, 2007). "ABX Completes CHI Acquisition and Holding Company Formation". ABX Air, Inc..
  40. (March 22–28, 1995). "World airline directory – ABX Air (Airborne Express)". [[Flight International]].
  41. (March 19–25, 1997). "World airline directory – Airborne Express (ABX Air)". [[Flight International]].
  42. Kaminski-Morrow, David. (June 30, 2008). "PICTURE: Fire badly damages ABX 767F at San Francisco". [[Flightglobal]].

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