HEBRON, Ky. — If you bought a gift online this holiday season, there’s a good chance it will travel through CVG.
The airport is one of the fastest-growing cargo airports in the world. It’s the sixth-largest by volume in North America and the twelfth-largest in the world, according to spokesperson Mindy Kershner.
Since the airport charges a landing fee for each aircraft, all that cargo business is good for passengers, she said.
“If we have more and more landing fee revenues, we can kind of be that cost-effective airport and keep costs low for all airlines,” Kershner said.
Lower costs can mean attracting airlines to bring more routes and services. Revenue can also be used for improving existing infrastructure, including the terminal, runways and taxiways.
In the time since DHL and Amazon have built up their operations, it’s allowed the airport to build more passenger service, she said.
Diversification is a key strategy for the airport, Kiershner said, even within the cargo operation.
The airport is working on two major projects in the coming years to build on its cargo growth: Hangar Row and North Cargo Village.
With hangar row, “the goal is to create a one-stop shop on airport property with the development of additional aircraft repair and maintenance operations,” Kershner said.
Cargo Village is an opportunity to recruit freight forwarders that specialize in shipping goods, but without the time-sensitive delivery requirements that DHL and Amazon hold.
Three dozen planes carrying Amazon orders arrive at the $1.5 billion air hub on the south end of CVG every day. Ramp workers unload containers holding the packages from inside the aircraft, and bring them on electric vehicles to the facility.
Once inside, robots, conveyor belts and chutes help to process hundreds of thousands of packages daily.
“This air hub obviously is a critical piece to ensuring that we’re able to deliver for customers,” Amazon spokesperson Andre Woodson said.
Woodson said the location of the hub is purposeful.
“It allows us to have immediate access to day ground transportation on the East Coast, as well as transportation to the West Coast,” he said.
Economic development company BE NKY CEO Lee Crume said the Northern Kentucky region has no bigger economic asset than the airport.
“Suppliers and manufacturers and repair shops help feed into the airport’s ecosystem outside of the fence,” he said. “It’s just a huge impact.”
Crume said he hears from business leaders that they seek out CVG because they know the airport’s leadership makes business easy and efficient — “they can do it faster and more profitably than other places.”
“We ‘re very agile,” Kershner at the airport said. “We treat our airport as the business it is.”
