The U.S. Postal Service said it had already switched most of Montana’s airmail to ground transport several months ago. However, the air carrier’s CEO said the federal agency had relied on faulty data.
Alpine Air CEO Michael Dancy said this week he does not believe the postal service will be able to meet its own one- or two-day mail standards, despite promises to do so, the Daily Montanan reported.
“I think they just decided it was OK to not meet the delivery standards in the state of Montana,” Dancy said.
Alpine Air has been working with the Montana Postal Service for approximately 35 years.
A Postal Service spokesperson reiterated that there are no changes to Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express in Montana.
“The contract step was simply to transition to more reliable land transportation,” spokeswoman Kim Frum said in an email.
Last month, the Postal Service abruptly suspended its flight service in Montana and subsequently went silent amid air freight negotiations with Alpine Air, even though the company offered to reduce the contract by $3 million.
The Postal Service is in financial trouble and in 2021 released a plan to get its budget back in order and, as it said, “forge a bold vision for transformation” and deliver “excellent service.”
The company had expected a loss of $160 billion over the next ten years. The plan, which included cuts in air travel and investments in ground transportation, instead forecast a net profit of $0.2 billion.
However, its implementation in Montana was fraught with controversy.
Both Democratic U.S. Senators Jon Tester and Republican Steve Daines urged the Postal Service to change its decision regarding air service and expressed criticism of further impacts on Montana.
“Once again, it appears that the USPS is turning its back on rural America and attempting to solve its fiscal problems on the backs of our nation’s rural residents,” Tester said in a July 18 letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.
But the Postal Service withdrew from negotiations anyway, and Dancy said he has since taken a closer look at the federal agency Delivering for America’s plan. And he said he found it lacking information about air transportation.
For one thing, he said, the air traffic data reflects information about all air carriers, not just postal carriers, and does not reflect Alpine Air’s balance sheet in Montana.
The report described air transport as “highly unreliable” and stated: “Air transport is subject to high levels of uncertainty and risk (weather, flight delays, etc.) which can drastically affect service delivery.”
Before the pandemic, it was said that ground transport had achieved a punctuality rate of 92%, but air transport only achieved one of 89.4%.
However, Dancy said Alpine Air achieved a 99% on-time performance rate and maintained it even during the pandemic when the service was deemed essential.
The Postal Service’s plan, however, does not mention the 99% rate. The agency’s spokesperson said its plan “looks at the network as a whole and does not single out individual providers/states.”
Dancy also questioned whether ground transportation could provide first-class service given Montana’s winter weather and roads, a factor Tester also mentioned in his letter.
The Postal Service announced its plan to invest an additional $11 million in vehicles, but the agency did not provide any performance data on ground transportation in Montana to the Daily Montanan this week.
“Unfortunately, your request for ground data is not publicly available information,” Frum said. “However, I can tell you that consistent with the DFA plan, the majority of mail for this contractor, as well as others across the country, was already transitioned to existing ground transportation several months ago.
“The remaining minimum volume was not sufficient to justify continuing the service.”
The postal service did not comment directly on whether it would be able to continue to meet delivery standards during the winter months or over longer mail distances, such as across the country.
Last week, as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Tester secured provisions for the rural postal service in the budget package, including the provision directing the Postal Service to provide notice of the end of air freight contracts affecting Priority and Express Mail in Montana and other rural states.
Dancy, for example, is skeptical whether a one- or two-day service is still possible in a state the size of Montana.
“They just can’t do that,” he said. “And they know they can’t do that. But that’s what they represent.”
Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) nonprofit organization. Daily Montanan maintains its editorial independence. If you have any questions, contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick: [email protected].
