Air Transport Services Group Inc

Air Transport Services Group Inc (ATSG), headquartered in Wilmington, Ohio, is an air cargo transportation company that operates primarily in the U.S. and Canada. It is the largest provider of passenger charter flights to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), which accounted for 30% of its annual revenue in 2023. 

ATSG’s other major clients include Amazon, shipping companies DHL and UPS, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), for which ATSG provides deportation flights (see below). In addition to charter flights, the company provides these and other customers with air transportation services including aircraft leasing, aircraft maintenance and modification services, logistics, and training. As of 2023, it owns three airlines and a fleet of 130 cargo and passenger aircraft, including Airbus and Boeing 767 freighters.

ATSG is partially owned by Amazon. In 2016, ATSG granted Amazon the right to acquire up to 19.9% of the company over a five-year period, with the option to increase its ownership to nearly 40%. ATSG reports having a “long-standing strategic customer relationship” with Amazon, which accounted for 34% of its total revenue in 2023.

ATSG’s cargo airline Air Transport International is one of two airlines that comprise the bulk of Amazon’s air fleet (Amazon Air), which Amazon established in 2016. Since 2010, another ATSG subsidiary, Cargo Aircraft Management (CAM), has contracted with Israeli state-owned weapons manufacturer Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to convert Boeing 767 aircraft from passenger planes into cargo configurations for Amazon Air. As of 2019, around 80% of Amazon’s aircraft have reportedly been converted by IAI.

Omni Air International, ATSG’s passenger airline, has been the sole provider of “special high-risk charter” (SHRC) deportation flights for ICE. These flights involve deporting people who have allegedly “failed to comply with final orders of removal” or other ‘high-profile’ deportations; they differ from most ICE deportations, which are conducted via either routine charter flights or by booking seats on commercial flights. As specified in government contracting documents, Omni Air effectively “monopolize[d] the market” of SHRC deportation flights, as no other company was able to provide these services on ICE’s schedule. The planes used for these flights have included the Boeing 767 and 777.

ICE has not contracted with Omni Air directly for deportation flights, but rather through an intermediary broker company called Classic Air Charter, which has arranged most ICE air deportations. 

On many ‘high-risk’ deportation flights operated by Omni Air, ICE agents have restrained people using the WRAP, a full-body, straitjacket-like device. Anecdotal accounts have indicated that this process often involves pinning individuals facedown on the ground before the flight, beating them while they are restrained, and using TASERs to subdue them. The WRAP device is manufactured by Safe Restraints, a privately owned company based in Diablo, Calif. It is also used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies and prisons across the U.S. and has been implicated in multiple fatalities.