2. CUSTOMER SERVICE
Throughout 2002, the Postal Service maintained its primary focus on its mission of delivering outstanding customer service and value to the American people. The Postal Service exceeded the target for on-time performance for its flagship product, overnight First-Class Mail, achieving 94 percent on-time performance. The target was 93 percent on-time performance. However, the attacks of September 11, 2001 disrupted the nation’s air transportation network to an unprecedented extent. Immediately following the attacks, commercial air transportation was grounded. National limitations on the carriage of parcels on air transport were then put in place. As a consequence, the Postal Service has been unable to use commercial air transportation to the same extent that it had prior to September 11, 2001. This change in air transportation availability required the Postal Service to change its national transportation and distribution plans for 2002 and to develop alternative resources. We required additional surface transportation and placed a greater reliance on our arrangement with FedEx to transport mail. Because these changes affected the entire national postal network, a period of time was necessary to integrate these new arrangements into ongoing postal operations.

Because of these disruptive impacts on the national transportation network, we were unable to meet our targets for the Express, Priority and 2/3 Day First Class Mail indicators for 2002. Nevertheless, the Postal Service responded to this national crisis, developed new transportation resources and network systems and, restored and even improved service levels over the course of the year. During the last quarter of the fiscal year, we improved service over the previous quarter by more than 2.5 points for Express Mail service, 3.5 points for First-Class Mail (2- to 3-day) service and, 5.3 points for Priority Mail service. By the end of the year, record service levels had been achieved for several of the product lines.