UK Royal Mail to cut air services
Royal Mail, under fire for scrapping its mail trains, has said it would reduce the number of air services it uses in the latest stage of a £90m cost-cutting programme.
The state-owned company now uses 39 flights each week night, from 24 airports, to distribute 6.6 or 5.5m, of the 82m letters it delivers each day.
Under its new “hub-and-spoke” network, Royal Mail now intends switching from turboprop aircraft to bigger jets capable of carrying containerised mail.
Using 18 flights from 18 airports in the interests of efficiency and reduced costs, it said it would now carry an extra million first-class letters a day – with air providing 8% of the total over the next 12 months.
Royal Mail, facing its first all-out strike over pay and job losses for seven years, said the changes to its distribution network – due to be completed by the spring – would affect a maximum 50 jobs among the 30,000 planned overall redundancies.
Air links to London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports will be axed along with one to Cardiff under the plans which retain operations in outlying Scottish islands and regional centres.
Paul Bateson, RM’s managing director, logistics, said the new network would improve efficiency, distributing more mail by air at a “comparable cost to our present system”.
Instead of using eight operators, the company will rely on two – Channel Express and Titan Airways operating in an alliance – for its mail distribution by air.
The company has provoked disbelief by claiming that its new scheme will reduce daily road journeys from 8,500 to 2,500 – and slash carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas) emissions.
