Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina, United Parcel Service and DHL said yesterday that they have resumed service to parts of New Orleans.
UPS is serving the central business district and sections of the French Quarter. It also reopened 21 of its 22 affected buildings in the region and restored delivery service to every ZIP code in Mississippi and Alabama. The company has resumed daily flights into and out of Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.
For areas of New Orleans where it still cannot make regular deliveries, UPS opened a “hold-for-pickup” site for customers who want to retrieve packages on their own. The site, just outside New Orleans at a UPS building in the suburb of Metairie, LA, will accept and hold Next Day Air and 2nd Day Air packages for customers who wish to retrieve them.
Meanwhile, DHL, Plantation, FL, said it resumed service to the affected areas by opening DHL Express stations in New Orleans and Covington, LA, which will let it serve customers along the Gulf Coast except for those parts that are still inaccessible.
“Although full recovery will take time, we are pleased that residents in the areas stricken by Hurricane Katrina are returning to their homes and businesses much earlier than expected,” Fred Beljaars, executive vice president of operations at DHL, said in a statement. “As a result, DHL is able to bring its local operations back online, resuming service along the Gulf Coast to support customers who depend on DHL for their shipping needs.”
DHL also has started daily inbound and outbound flights at New Orleans' airport. The company began new daily air express service into Baton Rouge, LA, on Sept. 7.
Melissa Campanelli covers postal news, CRM and database marketing for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
