You’ve got fail.
A regional air service, owed nearly $400,000 by the United States Postal Service, suspended mail deliveries this week in protest of the agency’s outstanding debt.
Penobscot Island Air, which services Maine’s island communities, says the USPS has failed to pay $388,000 for deliveries dating back to 2023.
On Tuesday, the airline said USPS made a few good-faith payments earlier this year, but none after March 13, reported The Sun. They added that they have not been paid for any deliveries in 2026.
“While our mission is to support the islands, PIA employees need a paycheck. We can’t operate as a business if almost a fifth of our yearly revenue is tied up in the bureaucracy of the United States government,” said the airline in a statement made Tuesday morning.
Defending their choice to suspend services, the airline continued, “We have to make a small stand, so we won’t be delivering USPS mail today. It’s been 75 days this year alone that we have dutifully loaded up USPS mail and ferried or flown it out to the islands.”
While the USPS was feeling the burn, PIA made regular deliveries for both FedEx and UPS on Tuesday.
PIA shared that they notified the USPS, island postmasters, and municipal officials on Monday of their decision not to make deliveries on Tuesday.
The airline maintains that it had spent “countless hours” trying to resolve the situation with the USPS financial department, to no avail.
PIA expressed compassion for the island communities impacted by their decision and explained how the situation reached critical mass.
“We hope we can resolve this situation quickly, as we value our partnership with the USPS and the islands,” the original statement read.
“We know you rely on the mail for critical packages such as medications. We have no intention of dragging this out and will go back to work without payment if we must. What’s happening isn’t normal or okay. We’ve just run out of other avenues to show the USPS we can’t continue operating this way,” the airline added.
Since then, however, the company said it had received word from USPS that it will be paid about 25% of the outstanding balance on Friday, reported New Center Maine.
“Considering the pace at which USPS generally moves, our contract officer pulled off a small miracle to make it happen,” the airline said in a Facebook update. “We have a framework for going forward, and there’s enough clarity for us to work with.”
On that resolution, the airline resumed regular mail deliveries on Wednesday — for now.
A spokesperson for the USPS previously told Maine’s WMTW that “the Postal Service does not publicly discuss specifics with our business relationships. We will reach out to Penobscot Island Air representatives to resolve the matter.”
It has not been a bountiful spring for the USPS; the carrier lost a lucrative partner in retail giant Amazon after the two sides failed to reach a new contract.
Last month, Postmaster General David Steiner warned lawmakers the agency could run dry by October — and potentially halt mail delivery altogether by 2027 if Congress doesn’t step in.
The agency recently informed federal budget officials that it will temporarily suspend its employer contributions to Federal Employees Retirement System annuities.
The step is meant to preserve cash and liquidity amid the Postal Service’s ongoing financial crisis.
Once delivering a whopping 213 billion pieces of mail annually at its 2006 peak, per Business Insider, the agency has been bleeding money ever since, including a staggering $9 billion loss last fiscal year and $1.3 billion already gone in early 2026.
The Postal Service hasn’t turned a profit since 2007
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