Airmail
Since the official language of the Universal Postal Union is French, airmail items worldwide are often marked Par avion, literally: "by airplane".
Today it is often the case that mail service is categorized and sold according to transit time alone, with mode of transport (land, sea, air) being decided on the back end in dynamic intermodal combinations.
Specific instances of a letter being delivered by air long predate the introduction of Airmail as a regularly scheduled service available to the general public.
[2][3] The first official air mail delivery in the United States took place on August 17, 1859, when John Wise piloted a balloon starting in Lafayette, Indiana, with a destination of New York.
An unofficial airmail flight was conducted by Fred Wiseman, who carried three letters between Petaluma and Santa Rosa, California, on February 17, 1911.
[6] The world's first official airmail flight came the next day, at a large exhibition in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, British India.
The organizer of the aviation display, Sir Walter Windham, was able to secure permission from the postmaster general in India to operate an airmail service in order to generate publicity for the exhibition and to raise money for charity.
[7] Mail from people across the region was gathered in at Holy Trinity Church and the first airmail flight was piloted by Henri Pequet, who flew 6,500 letters a distance of 13 km (8.1 mi) from Allahabad to Naini—the nearest station on the Bombay-Calcutta line to the exhibition.
[9][11][12] The first official American airmail delivery was made on September 23, 1911, by pilot Earle Ovington under the authority of the United States Post Office Department.
On July 16–18, 1914, he flew his Blériot XI aircraft from Melbourne to Sydney, a distance of 584 miles (940 km), carrying 1785 specially printed postcards, some Lipton's Tea and some O.T.
[14] The world's first scheduled airmail post service took place in the United Kingdom between the London suburb of Hendon, North London, and the Postmaster General's office in Windsor, Berkshire, on September 9, 1911,[15] as part of the celebrations for King George V's coronation[16] and at the suggestion of Sir Walter Windham, who based his proposal on the successful experiment he had overseen in India.
The route, which ran between Washington, D.C., and New York City, with an intermediate stop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was designed by aviation pioneer Augustus Post.
The 1928 book So Disdained by Nevil Shute—a novel based on this author's deep interest in and thorough knowledge of aviation—includes a monologue by a veteran pilot, preserving the atmosphere of these pioneering times: "We used to fly on the Paris route, from Hounslow to Le Bourget and get through as best as you could.
On 25 December 1918, the Latécoère Airlines (later becoming the famed Aéropostale) became the first civilian international airmail service, when mail was flown from Toulouse, France, to Barcelona, Spain.
Since stamp collecting was already a well-developed hobby by this time, collectors followed developments in airmail service closely, and went to some trouble to find out about the first flights between various destinations, and to get letters onto them.
