Department of post's cargo aircraft to fly from July

New Delhi: The department of post (DoP) has acquired a cargo aircraft on lease from Indian Airlines, which will be functional from July. In an interaction with FE, communications and IT minister Dayanidhi Maran said the aircraft would mainly fly to northeastern states during night and to the metros during day.
Once the demand picks up, the DoP would acquire more aircraft, Maran said. At present, mails are delivered through rail service and a small volume is handled by air. The problem with air service right now is the unavailability of flights on certain routes and space constraint.
According to DoP officials, the aircraft would help in quicker mail services to the Northeast, which, at present, takes around six days. With the aircraft, the time is expected to come down to three days. Since the aircraft can service the Northeast only during night, it would be used for carrying mails, speed post articles and parcel and consignment business to the metros and certain tier I and tier II cities during the day. The aircraft plans to cover around 10 metro cities. In such places, the mail delivery time will come down by a day.
To make optimum use of the aircraft, the DoP is working on ground feeder links to the aircraft. It will build a ground transportation system, which would be able to deliver mails faster to and from the aircraft.
27/04/07 Rishi Raj/Financial Express

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Categories: Cargo Apr 2007, Indian Apr 2007, New Apr 2007