The last plane is out of Berlin: Deutsche Post has ended air travel for delivering letters and packages within Germany.

Letters and packages no longer delivered by plane in Germany

Germany’s national postal service Deutsche Post has announced that it will no longer use planes to deliver letters and packages within the federal republic.

The international company has used nighttime flights to deliver domestic post out of Berlin, Munich, Hanover and Stuttgart for over 62 years. Operations came to an end on March 28, when the last flight left BER Airport for Stuttgart.

International post to and from Germany will continue to be delivered by plane and will be transported in the hold of passenger aircraft.

Longer delivery times make room for CO2 reduction

Since 1997, the German Postal Act has required 80 percent of letters to be delivered by the next day, and 95 percent two days after they were sent.

Now, a decision to relax quick delivery times means that Deutsche Post can switch to delivering domestic letters and packages by road and rail. 

The company says that this domestic switch will reduce the amount of CO2 used to deliver a single letter by around 80 percent.

Thumb image credit: Gorloff-KV / Shutterstock.com