Inside Amazon Air’s high-speed Lakeland operation

LAKELAND, Fla - Ever wondered how your Amazon package makes it to your doorstep in less than 24 hours?

At the Amazon Air Hub – also referred to as the Amazon Air Gateway — in Lakeland, it’s a high-speed, coordinated operation.

 The path of a package

By the numbers:

This facility – located at Lakeland Linder International Airport — - handles 16 daily flights: Eight fly packages in, and eight fly packages out.

Converted passenger jets are packed to the brim with large silver containers called "unit load devices," or ULDs. Around 40 ULDs fit on one plane – and each one of those is packed with packages. That translates to roughly 30,000 packages aboard a single aircraft on average.

After the plane lands, ground crews quickly unload the ULDs.

 Lakeland Air Gateway Operation

What we know:

Packages head inside to a massive sorting facility where human workers, conveyor systems, and high-tech robotics work in tandem to direct traffic.

"It is technology that we have that increases speed, it increases capacity, and it increases again that granular level to be able to sort down to the customer's doorstep," said Ryan Wenzel, site leader for Amazon Air Lakeland International Airport.

Packages zip through complex conveyor belts, where automated systems scan and route items of all shapes and sizes to their next destination — whether that is a sorting center or delivery station.

Next stop after that? It’s your doorstep!

"We serve as many as hundreds of thousands of packages every single day and well over a million packages every single week," Wenzel added.

 Automated sorting facility technology

What we don't know:

Officials have not released the exact monetary cost of the robotics equipment inside the facility. It remains unknown how many individual workers are employed at the site alongside the automated systems.

LakelandBusiness