Jersey's mail plane delivers for the final time

Jersey's mail has arrived by plane for the final time.

For more than eighty years, letters and parcels have been delivered to the island each weekday on the mail plane.

From Monday, the mail will be transported by boat, after a decision by the Royal Mail and Jersey Post to scrap the service.

A Royal Mail spokesperson said "the provision of the aircraft is no longer commercially viable" and a pre-existing ferry service would instead be used.

There will no longer be a next day delivery service as a result.

Royal Mail said the move would reduce costs "amid a steady decline in letter volumes" and help the company work towards a 2040 net zero target.

The decision followed a public consultation, to which 25 people responded.

Jersey's government wrote to Royal Mail to share the concerns.

A petition calling for the States to save the mail plane was signed by nearly 1,500 people.

Ministers responded by saying the change would "have almost no impact on inbound deliveries".

The first flight landed at Jersey airport on 1 June 1937 at 09:00.

Archivist Stuart Nicolle from the Jersey Archive said the first letter to arrive via the new mail plane was one of congratulations to the island's Bailiff Alexander Coutanche from the director general of the Post Office, Sir Thomas Gardiner.

Mr Nicolle said Mr Coutanche was "basically saying it's fantastic that this service is being inaugurated", and that all the letters "would have been typed up on typewriters, and even the envelopes were typed up on typewriters".

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