Russian Post tackles backlog of incoming American mail
Russian Post has been having trouble with its incoming international mail at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, but has now ended a two-day suspension of shipments. The Post has been having all manner of problems with its processing of record incoming mail volumes in recent months, and has been trying to persuade foreign posts to start sending Russian-bound mail to airports other than just Moscow, to spread out the processing a little
The latest problem came to a head this week as a 100-ton backlog of mostly American mail built up at the airport 18 miles north-west of Moscow.
Russian Post suspended incoming mail into Sheremetyevo on Tuesday, but confirmed today that it is now accepting shipments from air carriers flying into the airport as of this morning, with processing problems now “fully resolved”.
The Post blamed much of its problems on the US Postal Service, claiming that to cut costs, USPS had been finding “irregular” ways to get mail into Russia, but that attempts to send mail via Istanbul had seen mail delayed and accumulated at the Turkish airport from February until early April.
This month saw the entire volume of mail accumulated in Turkey suddenly arriving at the Moscow airport, overloading the system.
Russian Post said today it has agreed emergency measures with customs authorities to use additional mail processing capacity to deal with the backlog.
Throughout the suspension of incoming mail shipments, Russian Post said its outgoing international mail activities continued, as did its freight services.
Other postal services around the world have been warning customers of delays to their Russian-bound mail, and said following the end of the suspension that further delays could be expected while operations get back to normal.
Latvian Post said it had been routing its express mail to Russia in via St Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport. For normal mail, it said customers sending letters after 4th April could still expect delays in getting them to Russian addresses.
