46. Mr. Brian Harrisonasked the Postmaster-General whether he will give an estimate of how many air mail letters and packages were lost in the recent air crash at Heathrow; and how many were salvaged and re-dispatched by his Department.
§ Mr. Joseph SlaterThe number of individual letters and packages are not available. Of the 191 bags of letter and parcel mail loaded on the aircraft, 22 bags were recovered intact and were sent on by the first available services.
A quantity of other mail was salvaged, out of which some hundreds of letters and parcels could be identified and repaired sufficiently to be sent on to the addresses. Many others, of which the names and 56W addresses of the senders—but not those of the addressees—were decipherable, were returned with a suitable explanation. But I regret that about three-quarters of the mail was unfortunately either completely destroyed or irreparably demaged.