How does airmail usually work?

you would not believe what some of those Yank forces guys try to send home in the mail, lets just say the Police have been involved more than once !!

… and you’d be amazed at what people try to send as domestic mail! At least once every couple of month the bomb disposal guys would be at the sorting office having found something in the scan!

Deep joy….

International Airmail to the US is carried on Passenger flights (maybe freighters too i am not sure about that).
United Airlines carries Royal Mail, and mail from the various other Postal Services opening up (Deutsche Post, Swedish post etc..) and US Military Mail, the US Forces mail is only allowed to be carried on a US Carrier.
All mail is security screened like Cargo, you would not believe what some of those Yank forces guys try to send home in the mail, lets just say the Police have been involved more than once !!

Yes a very good description of the mail network/system that runs at night, and as Steve will accept, he has spent a lot of time teaching me about the system (also flytecomm did a bit of the teaching ;)) so I could get it onto Flight Sim!

Scott

An excellent and detail description there of Ops Steve!

There are two types of operation here. In the UK a domestic network known as “Skynet” is run by the Royal Mail. This essentially runs a network of flights through Royal Mail “hub” airports Monday through Friday, with a smaller Sunday operation. In the Uk these are (from North to South):-

RAF Kinloss (Inverness / Highlands and Islands due INV Night closures)
Aberdeen
Edinburgh
Newcastle
Belfast Aldergrove
Liverpool
East Midlands
Stansted
Bristol
Exeter
Bournemouth

Then early morning services are scheduled to get into the likes of The Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, and most of the larger Scottish Highlands and Islands.

The primary trunk routes are operated by a consortium run between Jet2 and Titan (Benair were also part of this but have since gone independant I believe). Trunk routes (such as STN-EDI, EMA-BFS, NCL-STN, EMA-EDI) are run using a containerised operation (Bins) which allow for a quicker turnaround time on Boeing 737-300s and BAe 146-200s. For the Jet2 and Titan aircraft this is where conversion from Pax to Freight aircraft happens overnight and is why Jet2 started routes out of EDI, BFS, NCL and alike as these aircraft flew the mail overnight, and laid idle during the day. The exeption to this with Jet2 is G-CELW which is a pure freighter based at EXT).

Many of the trunKroutes are timed to feed into a network of smaller aircraft. Since the demise of Emerald this has changed significantly shal we say. BAC Express, Aurigny, Air Contractors and Benair are the main concerns (Using Metro’s ATR42, ATR72, Shorts 360), however the rest of the aircraft in the shortfall have been provided by ACS and include AN26s and AN72s. Some routes run in their own rights as stand alone with no connecting traffic, others run as a feeder service.

A good example of a feeder service would be the EDI-FSS (Kinloss) service, where mail connects from EMA-EDI, LPL-EDI, and STN-EDI flights. These are seperated from several areas of differant mail on the inbound flights (Inverness, Glasgow, Edinburgh etc), collated and the aircraft (Shorts 360 size or alike) runs upto FSS on the back of this to ensure all is ready for the morning. This aircraft either stays in FSS or positions over the ABZ if it has no other work and flies an early evening ABZ-EDI bringing mail in to connect with the trunkiliners departing south on the opposite services.

Other than the outlying Islands mail flights (which run later due to airport opening times) the majority of the mail operation finishes around 2-3am. Any later running flights are time-penalised and Fines issued to the operators, and will have a knock on to what time mail is delivered to the customers door. As an indication as to the size of the operation, when one HS748 blocked the runway at EDI and flights had to divers (4 or 5 I believe), 1.5 million items of time critical mail failed.

The international mail is somewhat similar, however belly cargo space is purchased. Want to send a letter from Liverpool to Dublin? This runs on the Aer Lingus flight over from LPL (if still running) or MAN for which the Irish Post / Royal Mail may have 2 containers booked a day in the belly hold. Other operators purchase space on freight aircraft, or purchase space from a charterer. Revenue from freight on pax aircraft is quite significant, however as a rule of thumb the lo-cost operators don’t dip into this market.

The BA aircraft wear this logo as they are one of the biggest movers of UK mail overseas as discribed above.

Hope this explains a little bit of what the operation is all about!

Interesting – hadn’t made the connection between the Royal Mail badge on BA planes and them actually carrying mail to overseas destinations (for some reason, I thought it was advertising?). I was also unaware of the Jet2 connection.

It always works quite quickly, though : these days it usually takes only two days for something posted in the UK to arrive at its desitnation in France (based on the post mark) and vice-versa. Stuff sent to the US seems to take about a week.

Airlines such as Jet2.com often take their seats out of the aircraft at night and use them for such uses as airmail i think. This is another way they create money coming in to the business. Some mail does travel in the hold of passenger a/c, BA have a small Royal Mail badge on their a/c.

Any one who wants to correct me go ahead:)

This is a very good Topic, its something i have always wondered… Be interested to see the results.