It may be difficult to explain to a 5-year-old niece or granddaughter on the mainland why matters of national security are in part to blame for her not getting that Christmas dolly on time. But a combination of the normal
It may be difficult to explain to a 5-year-old niece or granddaughter on the mainland why matters of national security are in part to blame for her not getting that Christmas dolly on time.
But a combination of the normal December doubling of mail moved by the U.S. Postal Service and a continuing restriction on parcels flying on passenger airplanes means that if you didn’t mail your packages yesterday, they’ll likely not arrive at mainland addresses until after Christmas.
“Since Sept. 11, we’ve had different security measures that have affected our transportation system, so we’re not at the level of delivery that we were prior to” the mainland terrorist attacks. “But we’re close,” said Felice Broglio, a Postal Service spokeswoman in Honolulu.
Even in a “normal” Christmas period, “it would take at least a week” to get a package from here to the mainland, or from the mainland to Hawai’i, she said.
The Monday the week before Christmas (yesterday) is typically the busiest single day of the year for the Postal Service, largely because people have shopped over the weekend and are shipping gifts to friends and loved ones all over the world, Broglio explained.
“Normally, as we get closer to Christmas, our parcel volume could double,” she said. And that volume, even when the Postal Service has contracted for additional space on air freight carriers, “still slows the system down,” she said.
That translates into delays of holiday mail and, inevitably, post-Christmas arrival of holiday gifts.
Packages leaving Hawai’i are traveling at a rate as close to normal as possible, but islanders hoping for a gift from the mainland by Christmas might be disappointed, Broglio advised.
Before Sept. 11, mail bound for Hawai’i (or Guam) from just about any mainland post office would have been put on a passenger airplane and arrived rather quickly. Now, though, the mail travels by truck or train to Los Angeles, where it is loaded on cargo planes bound for Hawai’i.
“That’s what’s causing some of the delay,” Broglio said.
The banning of parcel mail from passenger planes is, of course, the result of the terrorist attacks and the U.S. response on all fronts, especially airline security.
“Satellite areas” such as Hawai’i, Alaska and Puerto Rico, which depended on mail moving on passenger planes before Sept. 11, have been the most adversely impacted by the Federal Aviation Administration ban on mail parcels on passenger flights, Broglio said.
During the holiday period, and before Sept. 11, priority packages to and from Hawai’i reached their destinations within three days, although the only guaranteed delivery is express mail (two days).
“Instead of three days, the average has been more like five,” Broglio said of priority packages sent since Sept. 11. “And that’s not good enough.”
The delays are frustrating for the 3,000 postal employees in Hawai’i, especially lettercarriers who see the aged postmark dates on the mail they’re delivering, she said.
The postal workers realize they have little control over the measures implemented since Sept. 11. “We’re talking national security here,” she said.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
