Deutsche Post has officially ended its domestic letter delivery flights after more than 62 years. The final plane departed from Berlin early Thursday morning, heading to Stuttgart. Prior to this, planes had also departed from Hanover, Munich, and Stuttgart. These six planes were solely carrying letters, totaling around 1.5 million items weighing 53 tons. This accounts for approximately three percent of the daily volume of letters transported by Swiss Post in Germany.
In an effort to cut costs and improve their carbon footprint, Swiss Post will no longer utilize letter transport aircraft. The company states that by using land transportation, CO2 emissions per letter are reduced by over 80 percent. For many years, the Group heavily relied on flights due to legal time constraints for letter deliveries. However, with an ongoing legal reform likely to weaken these constraints, Swiss Post has decided to discontinue the flights.
The night flights for collecting letters began in September 1961 and peaked in 1996, with an average of 430 tons in 45 nightly flights. As digitalization progressed, the importance of letters diminished, resulting in reduced demand and a gradual decrease in the number of letter flights.
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