AMAZON's new air cargo service for third-party shippers has reassured forwarders their cargo won't be bumped from flights to preserve space for Amazon parcels, reports New York's FreightWaves.

The need will not arise, said Tom Bradley, general manager of Amazon Air Cargo, at The International Air Cargo Association's recent trade show in Miami Beach.

"From an air perspective, we have both a hub-and-spoke and point-to-point [operation]. But we also have a ground transportation network, both road and rail, that is the densest in the United States," said Mr Bradley.

"That gives us a ton of options. And when you pair that with real-time dynamic routing that can send Amazon customers packages by millions of different route combinations, we can make real-time capacity adjustments," he said.

"So we very, very rarely ever have to choose between an Amazon package and an air cargo package because of that density, because of that flexibility.

"If a customer needs a particular product, we can choose from hundreds of our independent freight contractors with different transportation combinations and we can both provide a superfast, reliable delivery service for the Amazon customer and we can accept that Amazon air cargo volume," Mr Bradley said.

His remarks came less than two months after Amazon fully commercialized a wholesale air cargo service it had been quietly developing for years. The comments were designed to counter shippers' perceptions that highly integrated parcel carriers, including FedEx and UPS, tend to favour their own express shipments when capacity is constrained on flights.

The TIACA event was a coming-out party for Amazon Air's new status as a for-hire cargo airline in the US, Europe and India. Amazon Air Cargo banners and signs greeted attendees at the entrance to the Miami Beach Convention Center and in the hall.