• Holland And Barrett Vitamins Gibraltar Offer

Sep 02 - Royal Gibraltar Post Office Teams Up With Monarch Airlines To Help With Backlog Of Mail

The Ministry of Business and Employment and the Royal Gibraltar Post Office (“RGPO”) is pleased to announce a new collaboration between Her Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar and Monarch Airlines. On 6 July, as a direct result of a meeting held in the UK between Minister Costa, David Ledger (Chief Executive Officer of RGPO) and Monarch Airlines cargo services agent, the RGPO started a trial service for extra cargo space out of Gibraltar.

The trials have greatly reduced the backlog of mail at the airport and HMGoG have now entered into an indefinite agreement.

This new service is in addition to the current British Airways flights already in place. Mondays are the busiest days for air cargo and due to the lack of capacity on this day, some mail was left over for Tuesday flights. The RGPO will therefore resource the Monarch flight to endeavour that all mail is dispatched on Mondays.

Further, with the help of Royal Mail, the RGPO has been able to use semi-active radio-frequency identification (RFID) to monitor the quality of service of both airlines. Historically, packets containing goods can take a couple of days longer than mail containing only documents. The RGPO, since 2013, has been dispatching mail to Great Britain in two separate dispatches, those containing goods and those that do not. The results are very impressive, as they show that even with late Monday flights more than half of the mail is delivered in the United Kingdom by Wednesday with the bulk of the balance of mail delivered on Thursday. This is subject to customers completing the Customs Declaration correctly.

The cargo services agent for Monarch Airlines is Airline Cargo Management Limited (ACM), incorporated in the UK in 1988. Aidan Cronin, Director of ACM said: “Monarch Airlines Cargo is delighted to be working alongside HM Government of Gibraltar and the Royal Gibraltar Post Office in this venture and look forward to being able to offer added value and a reliable service on the flights from Gibraltar to the UK."

Commenting on the above, the Minister for Business and Employment, the Honourable Neil F Costa MP, said: “Her Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar is fully committed to delivering a first class service in relation to postal delivery. This not only means delivery within Gibraltar but also delivery to the UK and further afield. With the establishment of a closer working relationship with Monarch Airlines, we have been able to introduce this service to significantly improve what is already offered. The introduction of the extra air cargo space on Monarch’s flight on Mondays will also improve our air cargo delivery time. We have already seen the results of the trials and these, I can say, are very favourable. The reduction of mail delivery time, however small, will greatly improve the service being offered to Gibraltar’s individual and business service users." 

{fcomment}