Many airlines currently use passenger cabins to transport cargo. It is a long tradition that it is not just passengers who sit in the seats.
At the moment, there are occasionally boxes instead of passengers on the seats of Lufthansa, Condor and Co. Since freight capacities are lacking due to the corona crisis, passenger aircraft are now becoming cargo aircraft, for example for medical goods. For some, the loaded seats are an extraordinary sight, for others they evoke memories – of the night airmail.
“For this purpose, since my apprenticeship as an aircraft mechanic at Lufthansa in Hamburg in the early 1970s, I have prepared planes late at night,” says aeroTELEGRAPH reader Michael Walczak. For the night mail flights, he and two or three colleagues in passenger planes would have removed the covers of the seat rails and put special protective covers over the seats, recalls today’s retiree.
Passengers during the day, letters and parcels at night
As soon as the plane, in which travelers had previously been sitting, had been converted, it was loaded with mail. Large packages went into the cargo hold, boxes with letters landed on the seats and were strapped there with straps. “The plane then went up to Frankfurt shortly before 11 p.m.,” says Walczak. Night mail pilots from several German cities met at the largest German airport.
“In an outside position in front of Terminal 2, the mail was reloaded between the planes and then it went back to the point of departure,” said Walczak. There the mail was unloaded, the seat covers were removed and the covers of the seat rails were reinstalled. “At 6 o’clock, the plane usually started again for the first flight with passengers.” The loaders in Hamburg had often received help from the airport fire department when loading and unloading.
Post as the largest customer for Lufthansa
The domestic night airmail service started in 1961. “Overnight, so to speak, the Deutsche Bundespost has become Lufthansa’s largest customer”, was then read in the company magazine “Lufthansa Nachrichten”. “It has commissioned Lufthansa to set up a night airmail network that went into operation in the night from September 1 to 2.” First four Convair 440 Metropolitan and one Viscount 814 flew.
“Since these planes fly in the regular scheduled service during the day, the seats are provided with protective covers along the length of the cabin – a process that has already given the night airmail the name ‘The Flying Carpet Company’,” it said. The planes headed for Frankfurt as the center of the night flight network from Monday to Friday.
More airports, more planes, more mail
“Half an hour after midnight, the Metropolitan from Stuttgart and the Viscount from Munich arrive as the first airmail aircraft; at 0.45 a.m. the Metropolitan follows from the direction of Hanover – Cologne / Bonn; five minutes later the two Metropolitans from Hamburg and Bremen – Dusseldorf land, “said the” Lufthansa News “.
Other cities were added later. In 1991, for example, Leipzig and Dresden were connected to the night airmail network and direct flights between Cologne and Stuttgart, Nuremberg and Berlin were also started. Of course, the aircraft types also changed. For example, Boeing 727, Boeing 737, Airbus A300 and Airbus A310 were used.
“Over 300 tons of domestic German mail per night”
In 1999 there were 18 aircraft that distributed mail between 13 German airports. “This means that Lufthansa Cargo manages 85 percent of Deutsche Post’s daily night air volume,” it said at the time. “That’s over 300 tons of domestic German mail per night.” But times changed over the next ten years. For example, Swiss Post discontinued domestic airmail flights in summer 2009, for cost reasons and due to underutilized capacity.
But the story didn’t end there. Because on December 1, 2009 night airmail pilots took off again in Germany. “From Monday to Friday, there will again be machines for Swiss Post on the three north-south routes Stuttgart-Berlin, Stuttgart-Hanover and Munich-Hanover (in both directions),” wrote the DPA news agency. “Aviators from Germanwings, Air Berlin and Tui are used.” The reason: Transport by truck had led to delays in delivery.
Three routes still exist today
And in fact there are such night airmail flights to this day. “In principle, we still fly the Stuttgart-Berlin Tegel, Stuttgart-Hanover and Hanover-Munich routes within our night airmail network and use passenger planes with cabin loads here,” a spokesman for Deutsche Post DHL told aeroTELEGRAPH. Currently, however, no mail is flown within Germany due to the corona pandemic. Stuttgart Airport was also closed due to a renovation.
The company did not explain which airlines transport the mail for DHL. However, a spokesman for Eurowings confirmed that the Lufthansa subsidiary was still flying night mail between Stuttgart and Berlin-Tegel until early April. It is assumed that these flights will continue when Stuttgart Airport is open again. When asked about the postal connections, Tuifly said that “flights are still occasional”.
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