Cancellation of Chennai flight may delay postal movement

TRICHY: Postal articles are likely to be delayed following the

cancellation

of the Trichy-Chennai daily night service of Jet Airways. This has forced the

Railway Mail Service

(RMS) authorities to go back to trains to send all types of posts — speed, parcel and registered.

Meanwhile, the newly-commenced Trichy–Mumbai daily service by Jet Airways has started bringing postal parcels from Mumbai.

RMS is a wing of India Post mainly for dispatching and accepting of all types of mail (post, speed post, registered post, parcel and express parcel) via train. Unlike postal services department, it functions on a 24×7 basis. About 10,000 mails including 5,000 speed posts are being dispatched from Trichy every day. These mails are dispatched in three sections — via Rameshwaram, Pearl City and

Nellai Express

trains — across the country through Chennai, officials said.

This apart, a considerable number of mails was being dispatched via air till Jet Airways announced cancellation of its night service on Trichy – Chennai sector from July 1.

The flight which used to arrive at Trichy

airport

at 9.15 pm depart at 9.40 pm every day with a considerable number of mails, officials said. The withdrawal of the service has affected mail services to an extent, they added.

“Since we are mostly relying on train services, cancellation of the flight has not stalled our routine mails. However, there is an impact and we are looking at other options”, a senior official said.

At the same time, mails have started to arrive from Mumbai following the service launched between Trichy-Mumbai on March 25. “Since a number of Tamils reside in Mumbai, ever since Jet Airways launched its service, a considerable number of mails had started arriving at Trichy by this flight. Of these, 50% were bank-related documents such as ATM cards, ATM secret pin number, passbooks and chequebooks”, the senior official said.