Airmail
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Airmail (or air mail) is mail that is transported by aircraft. It typically arrives more quickly than surface mail, and usually costs more to send. Airmail may be the only option for sending mail to some destinations, such as overseas, if the mail cannot wait the time it would take to arrive by ship, sometimes weeks.
In June 2006 the United States Postal Service formally trademarked Air Mail (two words with capital first letters) along with Pony Express.[1]
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[edit] Air-speeded
A postal service may sometimes opt to transport some regular mail by air, perhaps because other transportation is unavailable, but it is usually impossible to know this by examining an envelope, and such items are not considered "airmail". Generally, airmail would take a guaranteed and scheduled flight and arrive first, while air-speeded mail would wait for a non-guaranteed and merely available flight and would arrive later than normal airmail.
[edit] Names
A letter sent via airmail may be called an aerogramme, aerogram, air letter or simply airmail letter. However, aerogramme and aerogram may also refer to a specific kind of airmail letter which is its own envelope; see aerogram.
The choice to send a letter by air is indicated either by a handwritten note on the envelope, by the use of special labels called airmail etiquettes, or by the use of specially-marked envelopes. Special postage stamps may also be available, or required; the rules vary in different countries.
The study of airmail is known as aerophilately.
[edit] History
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.
Although homing pigeons had long been used to send messages (an activity known as pigeon mail), the first mail to be carried by an air vehicle was on January 7, 1785, on a balloon flight from Dover to France near Calais.
During the first balloon flight in North America in 1793, from Philadelphia to Deptford, New Jersey, Jean-Pierre Blanchard carried a personal letter from George Washington to be delivered to the owner of whatever property Blanchard happened to land on, making the flight the first delivery of air mail in the United States.
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. Weather issues forced him to land in Crawfordsville, Indiana and the mail reached its final destination via train. In 1959 the U.S. Postal Service issued a 7 cent stamp commemorating the event.[2]
Balloons also carried mail out of Paris and Metz during the Franco-Prussian War (1870), drifting over the heads of the Germans besieging those cities. Balloon mail was also carried on an 1877 flight in Nashville, Tennessee.
The introduction of the airplane in 1903 generated immediate interest in using them for mail transport, and the first official flight took place on 18 February 1911 in Allahabad, India to Naini, India, when Henri Pequet carried 6,500 letters a distance of 13 km.
In Australia, the first air mail contract was won by the fledgling Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services (QANTAS), commencing in November 1922. Many other flights, such as that of the Vin Fiz Flyer suffered crashes and some ended in complete disaster, but many countries had operating services by the 1920s.
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. Later we moved on to Croydon. (...) We carried the much advertised Air Mails. That meant the machines had to fly whether there were passengers to be carried or not. It was left to the discertion of the pilot whether or not the flight should be canceleld in bad weather; the pilots were dead keen on flying in the most impossible conditions. Sanderson got killed this way at Douinville. And all he had in the machine was a couple of picture postcards from trippers in Paris, sent to their families as a curiosity. That was the Air Mail. No passengers or anything - just the mail"[3].
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. The authorities often used special cachets on the covers, and in many cases the pilot would sign them as well.
The first stamps designated specifically for airmail were issued by Italy in 1917, and used on experimental flights; they were produced by overprinting special delivery stamps. Austria also overprinted stamps for airmail in March 1918, soon followed by the first definitive stamp for airmail, issued by the United States in May 1918.
The dirigibles of the 1920s and 1930s also carried airmail, known as dirigible mail. The German zeppelins were especially visible in this role, and many countries issued special stamps for use on zeppelin mail.
[edit] U.S. Air Mail
The first scheduled U.S. Air Mail service began on 15 May 1918, using U.S Army Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" biplanes operating on a route between Washington, D.C. (Washington Polo Grounds) and New York City (Belmont Park) with an intermediate stop in Philadelphia (Bustleton Field). (Service on the route was extended to Boston three weeks later on June 4th.) Among those who were on hand for the departure of the first flight from Washington, D.C., were President Woodrow Wilson, U.S. Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. Army Lt. George L. Boyle was selected to pilot aircraft #38262 on the first Northbound flight which, unfortunately, turned out to be a somewhat less than successful initial venture.
Almost immediately after taking off at 11:47AM, Boyle became disoriented and started flying South when he followed the wrong set of railroad tracks out of the city. Realizing that he was lost, Boyle attempted to find out where he was by making an unscheduled landing just 18 minutes later at 12:05PM about 25 miles South of the city in Waldorf, MD. Unfortunately, however, Boyle broke the prop on his aircraft when he made a hard landing, so the 140 pounds of mail he was carrying had to be trucked back to Washington from where it was finally flown North to Philadelphia and New York the following day.[4][5] The site of the first continuously scheduled air mail service is marked by a plaque in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C.
The first Transcontinental Air Mail service between New York to San Francisco was opened on August 20, 1920, but the mail was flown only during daylight hours and was entrained at night. The first nighttime air mail flight leg on this service was flown from Omaha, Nebraska, to Chicago by James Knight on February 22, 1921. The first daily Transcontinental Air Mail service involving night flying over the entire route was opened on July 1, 1924, reducing the time for a letter crossing the country to 28 hours.
[edit] Contract Air Mail (CAM)
In 1925, the Congress passed HR 7064 entitled "An Act to encourage commercial aviation and to authorize the Postmaster General to contract for Air Mail Service" (aka "The Kelly Act") which directed the U.S. Post Office to contract with private airlines to carry the mail over designated routes many of which connected with the Government operated Transcontinental route.
The first two commercial Contract Air Mail (CAM) routes to begin operation in the United States were CAM-6 between Detroit (Dearborn) and Cleveland and CAM-7 between Detroit (Dearborn) and Chicago which were simultaneously inaugurated on February 15, 1926. The contractor for both routes was the Ford Motor Company, operating as Ford Air Transport, using a fleet of six Ford built Stout 2-AT aircraft. Lawrence G. Fritz, later the Vice President for Operations for TWA, was the pilot of the first flight to take off with mail from Ford Airport at Dearborn, MI, on the CAM-6 eastbound leg to Cleveland.
On March 19, 1976, the USPS issued a 13-cent commemorative Postage Stamp (Scott #1684) honoring the 50th anniversary of U.S. commercial aviation launched with contract Air Mail service over these two routes as well as on CAM-5 which was inaugurated next on April 6, 1926, over the 487-mile route between Pasco, Washington, and Elko, Nevada, with an intermediate stop in Boise, Idaho.
Operated by Varney Air Lines (which later became part of United Airlines), the first Eastbound flight over CAM-5 was made successfully using a Laird Swallow biplane piloted by Leon D. Cuddeback. The first Westbound flight that afternoon was much less successful, however, as it was forced 75-miles off course by a storm enroute from Elko to Boise before making a forced landing near Jordan Valley, Oregon. The mail plane and pilot Franklin Rose remained missing for two days until pilot Rose finally managed to reach a telephone on April 8 after carrying the 98 pounds of mail for many miles out of the wilderness by foot and later on a horse borrowed from a farmer. The Westbound flown mail finally arrived at the Post Office in Pasco late in the morning of April 9, three days after leaving Elko.
On April 15, 1926, the third route to open (CAM-2) began operation with pilot Charles A. Lindbergh at the controls on the first flight. In October 1925, Lindbergh was hired by the Robertson Aircraft Corporation in St. Louis, MO, (were he had been working as a flight instructor) to first lay out, and then serve as chief pilot for the newly designated 278-mile CAM-2 to provide service between St. Louis and Chicago (Maywood Field) with two intermediate stops in Springfield and Peoria, Illinois. Operating from Robertson's home base at the Lambert-St. Louis Flying Field in Anglum, Missouri, Lindbergh and three other RAC pilots, Philip R. Love, Thomas P. Nelson, and Harlan A. "Bud" Gurney, flew the mail over CAM-2 in a fleet of four modified war surplus de Havilland DH-4 biplanes. A year later, Charles Lindbergh, the then otherwise unknown 25-year old Air Mail pilot, became world famous when he flew the Spirit of St. Louis on the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris in May, 1927.
A total of 34 Contract Air Mail routes would eventually be awarded and opened in the United States between February 15, 1926, and October 25, 1930, however with the 1934 "Air Mail Scandal" the USPOD cancelled all the contracts on February 9, 1934, which resulted in the suspension of commercial CAM service effective February 19, 1934.[1]
[edit] Post War
In the 1950s, general enthusiasm for rockets led to experiments with rocket mail. There was a single use of Missile Mail by the United States in 1959; see: USS Barbero. None of the various schemes went into production use, although many souvenir covers exist. A number of spacecraft have also carried space mail, sometimes in rather large quantities, all for promotional purposes. The study of these is known as astrophilately.
In the United States, domestic airmail long carried a higher rate, but in 1975 the United States Postal Service eliminated domestic air mail rates, deciding (coincident with the rise in the one-ounce first class domestic rate from ten to thirteen cents) that all domestic first class mail would be delivered by the speediest method of transportation.
[edit] Media
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First flights in aviation history
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[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Richard McP. Cabeen, Standard Handbook of Stamp Collecting (Collectors Club, 1979), pp. 207-221
- ^ USPS News Release #06-043 (June 20, 2006) U.S. Postal Service Expands Licensing Program
- ^ article on rootsweb about 1859 balloon mail flight
- ^ Nevil Shute, "So Disdained", London, 1928, Ch. 1
- ^ American Air Mail Catalogue (AAMS, 6th ed. 1998)
- ^ "Air-Mail System Runs True to Schedule, Except for Mishap at Washington End", The Philadelphia PUBLIC-LEDGER, May 16, 1918
[edit] External links
- UKweekly.com article on early airmail service
