Services
Post announces the end of its letter transport aircraft
According to Deutsche Post, there are still three planes that are on the move every night from Monday to Friday. Photo: Boris Roessler / dpa / symbol image
© dpa-infocom GmbH
It sounds strange: Every night, aircraft loaded with letters fly across Germany. Deutsche Post would like to give that up, but the legislature has to play along.
In order to generate less CO2, Deutsche Post would like to forego domestic flights for mail delivery.
There are still three aircraft that are on the road every night from Monday to Friday and whose use in terms of climate protection is questionable, said Tobias Meyer, the head of Post & Parcel Germany, of the German press agency in Bonn.
According to the manager, the prerequisite for the abandonment of domestic flights is that the legislature takes action and changes a requirement for fast transport. “As long as we are obliged to deliver at least 80 percent of all letters on the next working day, we cannot avoid night flights.” Without this obligation, the Post would shift these long-haul shipments to trucks, which have a significantly better CO2 balance per shipment than on the plane, says Meyer.
According to the Post Universal Service Ordinance, Deutsche Post DHL has to deliver at least 80 percent of the letters that are thrown into the mailboxes on one day on the next day – this rule is called “E + 1” (mailing day plus 1 working day). “E + 2” applies to 95 percent of letters, so they must reach the addressee no later than two days after being posted. Swiss Post suggests lowering the “E + 1” minimum value to 50 percent, but maintaining the 95 percent target for “E + 2” – then the time pressure would not be so great and the letters could also be transported long-haul by truck be transported. There are three return flights on the Hanover-Munich, Hanover-Stuttgart and Berlin-Stuttgart connections.
Last year, according to Swiss Post, 88.7 percent of letters reached consumers on the next working day and 98 percent on the next but one working day. According to the Federal Network Agency, however, the average is only 84.1 percent (E + 1) and 97.3 percent (E + 2). The difference in the information is due to the different types of measurement. It is unclear which information is legally valid – this has not yet been finally clarified, as Swiss Post has always met the minimum value after both measurements.
According to Swiss Post, the number of letters that are transported domestically by air is currently in the mid-single-digit percentage range of their total letter volume. If she were to forego the flights now and send this amount across Germany by truck, the “E + 1” value would fall – and the ordinance would then possibly be missed. In order to avoid this and to make letter delivery more climate-friendly, Post Board Member Meyer believes that the regulation needs to be changed.
“It is not feasible to cover the long distance from the mailbox to the recipient with trucks or even with freight trains overnight,” says the manager, who is to move to the top of the Post Board of Directors in spring 2023. If some letters did not reach the recipient until a day later, this would be acceptable from his point of view with a view to avoiding unnecessary emissions. Many customers would certainly accept this if it made transport more environmentally friendly.
The post had already made the request in 2019 in the discussion about the key issues paper for an amendment to the postal law, but the coalition of the Union and the SPD did not take it up. Meyer makes it clear that Swiss Post’s view of the topic has not changed.
In the coalition agreement, the federal traffic light coalition stated that it wanted to further develop the postal law to include socio-ecological standards. The Federal Ministry of Economics, which has now been run green, also refers to this in its answer to the question of what it thinks of lowering the E + 1 target. “Questions about the future universal service will be discussed in the context of the already necessary discussion about the amendment to the postal law announced in the coalition agreement,” said a spokeswoman. “Social-ecological aspects will also flow into the discussion and must be taken into account.”
The economic policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Reinhard Houben, is not very enthusiastic about a weakening of the E + 1 target. The Liberal points out that many letters would not reach the addressee until a day later. Even in the digital age there are many people for whom the fastest possible delivery of letters is important. “In order to forego domestic flights, Swiss Post could use other innovative methods that do not harm the consumer,” says Houben. For example, the Post could cooperate with Deutsche Bahn so that long-distance letters can be transported on trains.