Night airmail

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

The night airmail network is part of a logistics chain that is intended to ensure mail is delivered on the next working day in Germany .

history

On September 1, 1961, the construction of the night airmail began.

In 1994 there were 25 mail planes in use every night in Germany . The main hub was Frankfurt Airport , where 12 chartered Lufthansa planes met night after night to exchange mail. At Leipzig / Halle Airport , which was set up as the second night airmail star in October 1992, five planes with night airmail landed every night. There were also eight direct connections, including a. Munich - Cologne and Hamburg - Berlin / Schönefeld - Munich. A total of 400 tons of letter post, around 16 million letters, were transported in the night airmail network each night. From June 9, 1994 to March 23, 2005, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was connected to the domestic German night airmail network via Rostock-Laage Airport .

In the early years, mail flights were limited to a few connections per night. Until 1997, letters were also transported by rail in special mail trains or mail wagons . With the discontinuation of this mode of transport, night airmail gained in importance. At peak times, up to 32 domestic German flight connections were operated per night. A distinction had to be made between a few direct connections and connections within the framework of a hub-and-spoke system. Aircraft from all parts of the Federal Republic of Germany headed for Frankfurt Airport, which is centrally located in Germany, in a star shape. There, the mail was exchanged between the individual aircraft within about 1.5 hours at night, before the aircraft flew back in all directions to their departure airports. Rostock , Hamburg , Bremen , Hanover , Berlin, Münster / Osnabrück , Cologne / Bonn , Leipzig , Dresden , Nuremberg , Stuttgart , Lahr in the Black Forest and Munich airports have been involved in this star-shaped night airmail network since the late 1990s . The guideline was that for domestic transport routes of more than 450 km, the mail was sent within the framework of the night airmail network.

In 1998, 23 aircraft flew on 43 routes within Germany every night of the week in the night airmail network. Passenger jets from the airlines Lufthansa, Deutsche BA and Eurowings were used. The loading capacity of the machines was between 9 and 30 tons. Over 12 million letters weighing around 300 tons were flown per night.

In 2000, 13 airports were connected to the night airmail network with a hub in Frankfurt, 70 tons of mail were sent from Frankfurt every weekday and 60 tons were delivered to Frankfurt every night. In addition, 80 tons were exchanged between the aircraft. Internationally, 269 postal destinations were served from Frankfurt via additional hubs. Two thirds of these were served on working days, 50 tons per day. Transmail accounted for 85 tons per week.

The volume of night airmail handled at Münster / Osnabrück Airport is given as an example: 3,294 tons in 1999, 3,557 tons in 2000, 3,046 tons in 2001 and 2,783 tons in 2002.

As of 2003, the night airmail network was thinned out by Deutsche Post AG and mail transport increasingly shifted from air to road transport by truck. Reasons in this context are an increasingly important public concern of environmental protection, complaints from residents of the airports involved about nighttime aircraft noise , increased cost pressure in the mail business and lengthy negotiations to obtain special permits for the night flight bans that apply at most airports . Against this background, the hub-and-spoke system based in Frankfurt has been completely discontinued in the meantime and only a few direct connections have been maintained within the framework of the night airmail network. Connections were reduced in October 2000 and January 2002. In April 2003, flights for the transport of letters within Germany were reduced from 32 to 23 per night. On March 29, 2004 these were reduced to 20 night flight connections within Germany. In 2005, around four million letters weighing around 150 tonnes within Germany were transported by airmail every working day from 13 aircraft on 20 routes.

In 2007, around 7,000 tons of air mail were moved through the night airmail airport in Hamburg. At the end of March 2008, Hamburg was removed from the night airmail network. The network consisted of only ten night flight connections. At the same time, the Berlin – Frankfurt route was taken over by Air Berlin; it transported up to 12.5 tons of mail per day in a Boeing 737-800 in each direction.

In the first half of 2009, Swiss Post achieved delivery destination E + 1 in 96% of cases. The last ten night flight connections of Deutsche Post AG within Germany were completely discontinued in July 2009. Until November 2009, the company relied exclusively on transporting letters by truck. However, the road transport of letters over long German domestic routes proved to be slow and unreliable, the delivery destination E + 1 was only reached in 90% of cases for north-south letters, so that Deutsche Post AG did so in November 2009 after a five-month break Night airmail network with three direct connections, Hanover - Munich, Stuttgart - Hanover and Berlin-Schönefeld - Stuttgart in both directions, went back into operation.

In 1998 there were 12 flight movements for night airmail at Stuttgart Airport per night, eight in 2000, four from summer 2003 to July 1, 2009 and since November 30, 2009. The volume of night airmail in 2009 was 6,747 tons, in 2008 10,307 tons Letter mail, 2007 at 9,981 tons, 2006 at 9,786 tons.

links

In December 2009 the following connections existed within the German night airmail network:

• Hanover ↔ Stuttgart (operated by TUIfly )
• Berlin-Schönefeld ↔ Stuttgart (operated by Germanwings )

Aircraft

The aircraft used in the night airmail network are normal passenger aircraft . At the beginning from 1961 Vickers Viscount and Convair CV-440 were used, all of them Lufthansa machines. These were later replaced by Boeing 727 and Boeing 737 . In the 1990s, these were in turn replaced by aircraft from the Airbus A320 family and partially supplemented by larger Airbus A300s .

Before being used in the night airmail network, the aircraft seats are fitted with special protective covers, since the mail items are housed in both the cargo and passenger compartments. The planes take off in star-shaped operation (via Frankfurt) from the outstations Monday to Friday around 11 p.m. and in Frankfurt between 0.30 a.m. and 1.30 a.m.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} verkehrsrundschau Hamburg Airport: Airmail era comes to an end Report of March 28, 2008, accessed on July 11, 2010.
2. ↑ ^{a b} http://www.post-und-telekommunikation.de/PuT/KEP_1994_1_Jan-Juni.php .
3. ↑ ^{a b} Archived copy ( memento of the original dated November 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
4. ↑ VDI nachrichten July 23, 1999 ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
5. ↑ Hearing in the Hessian state parliament ( Memento of the original from August 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 375 kB). 
6. ↑ Airport environmental report ( Memento of the original dated August 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
7. ↑ ^{a b} Deutsche Post report of March 29, 2004.
8. ↑ openpr.de - Deutsche Post optimizes night airmail network (PDF; 378 kB).
9. ↑ posttip ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
10. ↑ deutschepost.de .
11. ↑ verkehrsrundschau - Air Berlin flies airmail message from March 27, 2008, accessed on July 11, 2010.
12. ↑ Wall Street: Online Post rows back with the night airmail network. Report dated December 2, 2009, accessed on July 11, 2010.
13. ↑ Die Zeit - Falling volume of mail saves on letter delivery. Report dated June 12, 2009, accessed on July 11, 2010.
14. ↑ flughafen-stuttgart.de press release dated November 30, 2009 ( memento of the original dated January 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
15. ↑ flughafen-stuttgart.de annual report ( memento of the original from April 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .