The German postal service will not deliver mail by air anymore

The last airplane with deliveries flew out of Berlin on 28 March

Deutsche Post, Germany’s national postal service, has officially ended deliveries of letters and parcels by air within the country. The last domestic air mail flight took off from Berlin on 28 March en route to Stuttgart.

The aim of the company is to show its real and serious commitment to the green effort and the reduction of CO2 emissions. Calculations show that now delivering a single letter to its recipient will be done with 80% less emissions.

International deliveries still done by air

Domestic airmail flights existed for 63 years as a service and were done exclusively at night. Back then, at the start of the 1960s, air transport was the fastest way to deliver mail, telegrams and parcels and in many cases, this was considered important for efficient communication given that instant messaging had not yet appeared.

Over the years, the amount of mail transported this way had gradually decreased, with six aircraft servicing the routes Stuttgart-Berlin, Hanover-Munich and Hanover-Stuttgart (each in both directions). This amounted to some 1.5 million letters flown each night or roughly 270,000 items per aircraft on average.

Political and social consensus in Germany today has largely determined that ensuring speedy delivery of most domestic letter mail by the following workday is no longer a core component of universal postal service. The trend now is to ensure that the postal delivery services are considered sustainable in the eyes of the public, so the company has taken the necessary steps.

Mail delivery within the country will now exclusively be done by road and rail, although international routes will be serviced by airplanes. Deutsche Post will continue to ensure fast letter mail transport between northern and southern Germany with the deployment of Sprinter vans, among other modes.