India Post now owns aircraft; starts service to North-East

NEW DELHI: Taking the competition from the private courier companies head-on, state-run India Post today announced induction of its own freighter aircraft leased from domestic carrier Indian for carriage of mail, parcel and logistics to North-East.

"In order to improve its mail delivery and transmission services in North-East, Department of Post has inducted a dedicated freighter aircraft for servicing the North East", I M G Khan, postal secretary said here.

The commercial service would be flagged on August 29 of by both the ministers -- Praful Patel and A Raja from Kolkata.

So far on the domestic front, leading logistics provider BlueDart and First Flight Courier have their own aircraft but none of them operate in North-East. While BlueDart operate in metros and Ahmedabad, First Flight operates in small cities.

DoP has spent Rs 12 crore including the lease amount and preparing the Indian Boeing 737-200 to take on the new role of a freighter dedicated aircraft capable of carrying 15 tonnes at a time. Kolkata would service as the regional hub for the freighter operations and will operate on Kolkata-Guwahati-Imphal-Agartala route on a regular basis.

Leased from Indian Airlines (now a part of Air India), this aircraft also heralds the first foray of India in the realms of air freight.

V Trivedi, CMD, Indian Airlines said 10 to 12 existing aircraft have been transformed into cargos and more are to be inducted soon for the purposes.

Khan said during the 11th Plan (2007-2012) the department plans to computerise 26,000 more departmental post offices adding the deficit in the postal department revenues would be wiped off in few years.