The U.S. Postal Service yesterday got the go-ahead from the Federal Aviation Administration to resume shipping letters on commercial airlines.
The postal service also lifted restrictions on delivering Standard A Mail that it had imposed last Tuesday in the most heavily affected areas of New York City. Last week the USPS had temporarily stopped shipping Standard A mail to 50 ZIP code areas in the city and encouraged mailers there not to send out Standard A letters and packages.
The expected delays in delivering mail since last Tuesday has prompted the Federal Trade Commission Friday to issue a statement saying that it would "react reasonably in cases of violations of its mail and telephone order sales rules that are a by-product of the terrorist crisis." The FTC also solicited comments from marketers to help determine the extent of related delivery problems.
Package shippers Federal Express and United Parcel Service had returned to normal yesterday except for certain areas of New York's lower Manhattan near where the World Trade Center had been. UPS contacted individual customers to arrange temporary pick-up and drop-off locations, spokesperson Kristen Petrella said. Federal Express was also reportedly trying to find alternate locations for its customers to use.
During the ban on air delivery--20% of mail moves through the air-- all packages and mail normally delivered by air were moved either by truck or railroad.
