Amerijet Brand Guidelines: A 1974 Miami Air-Taxi Start Turned Caribbean 767 Freighter Airline

One leased Cessna and the Bahamas.

Amerijet began in 1974. English Wikipedia says it was founded under the name Professional Charter Services by David Bassett, who became chairman and chief executive, and a partner, with a leased Cessna 401 flying passengers and cargo between the United States and the Bahamas. Air Cargo Week, reporting on the airline’s 50th anniversary in December 2024, described the same start: a Part 135 air-taxi operator with a single leased aeroplane.

Freight soon took over. Wikipedia says the company became a freight-only carrier in 1976 and, from late 1978 into the early 1980s, took courier contracts from Purolator, FedEx, UPS, DHL and Airborne Express. In 1982 Bassett bought out his partner and created Amerijet International. Wikipedia credits the logo and name to a Miami commercial artist, Michael I. Rosenthal.

The years since have included two ownership changes and a court-supervised restructuring. Wikipedia says Amerijet operated in Chapter 11 bankruptcy from 22 August to 31 December 2001, emerging after a financial restructuring; it was majority-owned by the private equity firm H.I.G. Capital from 2001 to 2016, and on 26 July 2016 H.I.G. completed its sale to the private equity firm ZS Fund. FreightWaves still described ZS Fund as the owner in December 2023.

Miami, the islands and a cold chain.

Amerijet’s network is drawn around one airport. The company says it flies its own freighter fleet of Boeing 767-300 aircraft from its primary hub at Miami International Airport to 38 destinations across the Caribbean, Mexico and Central and South America (English Wikipedia gives 48), and that its wider network reaches more than 350 locations in Europe, Asia, the Pacific, South Africa and the Middle East through partners. Within the United States and Canada it offers trucking, and in its Caribbean and Latin American region it handles customs clearance and last-mile delivery for business customers.

The islands set the rhythm. In a 2021 interview with Air Cargo News, the then chief executive said Puerto Rico was Amerijet’s number one destination, with five flights a day, and described the company as essentially a scheduled operator for the Caribbean and parts of Central America, with one or two weekly flights across the Atlantic to Brussels. The same article said a freight-forwarding arm had been built to serve cruise ships with spare parts and supplies, that the airline had received approval for extended-range twin-engine operations in March 2020, and that it was moving from an in-house cargo system developed in the early 1990s to the SmartCargo platform. The chief executive also said he wanted contract flying, CMI and ACMI, to make up three-quarters of the work within four years, alongside the scheduled network.

Temperature-controlled cargo is a large part of how Amerijet describes itself. In a release dated July 2017 the company said it had been awarded IATA’s CEIV Pharma certification on 27 June 2017, as the first all-cargo airline of US origin to earn it; Air Cargo News repeated that description in 2021. A November 2023 release announced its second CEIV Pharma recertification. The company’s Miami facility includes a dry warehouse and a perishables centre with refrigerated, frozen and chilled storage, and its product pages list general cargo, perishables and seafood, pharmaceuticals, dangerous goods and live animals.

How cargo airlines present themselves.

A cargo airline sells something its customers rarely see: space in the dark of a main deck. Its identity therefore lives on the outside of the aircraft. A freighter has few or no cabin windows, so the fuselage reads as one long, clean surface, and the tail becomes the main signature. Across the category, tails are painted in strong, simple fields of red, blue, orange or grey that can be recognised from an apron or a ramp camera at a distance, with the name in large capitals along the side.

The aircraft themselves are part of the message. Freighter operators name their types openly, and widebody freighters such as the Boeing 747-8F and 777F are presented as capability rather than decoration: the nose door of a 747, the main-deck side door, the number of pallet positions. Fleet lists, with types, counts and specification sheets, sit near the top of many cargo airline websites, often next to the next aircraft on order.

The network is shown as a map. A hub sits at the centre, and lines run out to gateways on several continents, sometimes with the road-feeder trucks that carry freight on from the airport drawn in as well. Schedules are published as downloadable timetables, because the reader is usually a freight forwarder planning a booking rather than a traveller.

The rest of the visual language comes from the cargo. Pages on special cargo, from live animals and fresh produce to pharmaceuticals, dangerous goods and outsized machinery, each get their own name and photograph. Charter pages show unusual loads, and partner pages name the logistics companies and shippers for which aircraft are flown. For a designer, the category is a study in practical identity: few elements, large scale, and a register built for operations staff, not for passengers.

Growth, contraction and a restructuring.

The fleet has grown and shrunk with the freight market. Air Cargo News reported in May 2021 that Amerijet had nine Boeing 767 freighters in mid-2020, had wet-leased two Airbus A321 freighters from Titan Airways, and was flying aircraft on a CMI basis for DHL under a deal that began in November 2020. In July 2022, Wikipedia says, Maersk agreed a CMI arrangement for Amerijet to operate three new Boeing 767-300 freighters owned by Maersk, and FreightWaves reported in January 2024 that Amerijet was flying three Maersk Air Cargo 767s between Asia and the United States.

The same January 2024 report covered a restructuring. Amerijet said it would return six Boeing 757 freighters to their lessors, defer agreements to add more 767 freighters, and lay off non-pilot staff; its chief executive said the restructuring had been completed with the support of the company’s investors and lessors. The company also announced a new contract for four weekly flights between Bogotá and Miami. A year later, in its 50th-anniversary announcement of December 2024, Air Cargo Week reported that Amerijet was operating twelve 767 freighters.

The company states its purpose in simple terms. Its website gives its mission as transporting “the goods that enrich and connect the lives of our customers and communities” and lists core values that include people, customer focus, agility and reliability. The headquarters remain in Miami.

For a design guide, Amerijet shows a cargo airline whose identity is tied to one hub and one region, with a network map of island and Latin American airports, a single widebody freighter type and special-cargo pages for perishables and pharmaceuticals; compare DHL, for which it has flown contract services, and Western Global, another US freighter operator. For this guide we use harbour teal, a deep gulf blue, mango and sea mist with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Amerijet’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.