Airmail

As a rule, the speed of delivery of airmail is faster than in the case of regular, land, mail, but the cost of airmail services is higher than other types of mail service. Airmail can be the only way to send mail if the recipient is abroad or on another continent, and the importance of the letter requires its quick delivery to the addressee .

A registered airmail letter from Copenhagen to Stockholm , from where it returned, since the addressee was already in London at that time. The letter was forwarded and delivered to England via Amsterdam (1930) ^[2]

A letter sent by airmail may be called an aerogram and airmail letter ( airmail ). The air program is a closed airmail, the outer side of which is used for the address and at the same time serves as an envelope .

The marking on the envelope about sending a letter by air is done by hand or using special airmail stickers ( labels ), or specifically marked envelopes are used ^[≡] . Special airmail stamps may also apply depending on the country. 

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  The world's first airmail stamp ( Italy , 1917) ^{[^]}

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  Thailand Post Air Mail Label ^{[^]}

Background

Delivery of letters by air began to develop long before the advent of airmail as a regular service available to the general public.

First Airmail Flights

The appearance in 1903 of airplanes immediately aroused interest regarding their involvement in the transportation of mail. The first such official flight took place on February 18, 1911 in India from Allahabad to , during which Henri Peke transported 6.6 thousand letters and 250 special postcards over a distance of 13 km. Letters were canceled by a special stamp with the inscription: “First aerial post. UP Exhibition. Allahabad. 1911 ” (“ First Airmail. United National Exhibition . Allahabad. 1911. ”). The special stamp of Allahabad airmail was put in red paint, a small part of official correspondence received black prints. The stamp was made by order of the Government of India by the post office in the city of Aligarh and is unique: the cliche was destroyed immediately after the flight. The stamp shows the silhouette of a flying biplane over the mountains of Asia ^[3] :

The stamp project was drawn by the initiator of the flight, , the owner of an automobile company, who founded an aviation club in 1908. The amount received from the transportation of airmail was transferred to the Oxford and Cambridge Hotel for the maintenance of English students ^[3] .

The first international airmail in the history of aviation began to be carried out regularly starting from March 31, 1918 along the route Vienna - Krakow - Lviv - Kiev ^{[≡] [ ≡ ]} , which was six weeks earlier than the opening of the postal air route between Washington and New York ( Long- Island ) ^{[4] [≡] [ ≡ ]} .

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  Stamp of Ukraine (1993): 75th anniversary of the first airmail flight Vienna - Krakow - Lviv - Kiev ( Mi # 98) ^{[^]}

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  Same ( Mi # 99)

In 1919, pilot Eddie Hubbard transported 60 letters from Vancouver (Canada) to Seattle ( USA ) on a ^[5] .

In Australia, the first airmail correspondence contract was awarded to the young airline Qantas (short for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services ), which began shipping mail in November 1922. The planes of many other flights, like the flight of the biplane , crashed, and some even ended in complete disaster . Nevertheless, by the 1920s, flights were made in many countries.

In the book “ ” by Neville Schut , published in 1928, a novel based on the author’s sincere interest in aviation and his deep knowledge of its problems, there is a veteran pilot’s monologue that conveys the atmosphere of that era of aviation ^[6] :

“We flew along the Paris route, from Hounslow to Le Bourget , and made our way as we could. Then we went to Croydon . (...) They carried such an advertised airmail. This meant that the planes had to fly regardless of the presence of passengers . It depended on the pilot himself whether to cancel the flight in bad weather or to fly; the pilots sought to fly in the most impossible conditions. That is how Sanderson perished in Duenville. And all that he carried on the plane was a couple of postcards with views sent by tourists from Paris to their families as a curiosity. Here is such an airmail. No passengers or anything else - just mail. ”

Original text

"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 discretion of the pilot whether or not the flight should be canceleled 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."

In the 1920s and 1930s, the famous international writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery ^[≡] was the pilot of international airmail lines, including the French airline Aeropostal , which was reflected in a number of his works (the novel Southern Postal , etc. .).

The first postage stamps designed specifically for airmail were issued in Italy in 1917 and were used on experimental flights: overprints were made on urgent mail stamps ^[≡] .

Austria also overprinted airmail stamps in March 1918 for the world's first regular mail line ^[4] Vienna - Krakow - Lviv - Kiev ^{[^]} .

Soon there appeared the first standard series of stamps of airmail, which was released in the USA in May 1918 ^{[^]} .

In Soviet postal terminology, until 1932, airmail was officially called "airmail", after which the spelling " Airmail" was adopted for some time.

Since by the time the aircraft began to be used for postal purposes, stamp collecting was already a widespread hobby, philatelists closely monitored the development of airmail, were not lazy to find out about the first flights to different places, and sent letters with these flights. Authorities often resorted to various special cancellations on envelopes of the first flight . Often, the pilot also put his signature on them.

The study of airmail, as well as other methods of delivering mail by air, is carried out by aerofilateli . One of the most impressive collections in this area was the Moscow philatelist L. Ya. Melnikov. His collection “Airmail of the USSR ” was recognized at world philatelic exhibitions , where he repeatedly won big gold medals ^[7] .

• Examples of Soviet Airmail Whole Items
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  An artistic marked envelope of the USSR airmail in honor of the 175th anniversary of Kharkov University (1979), used for registered mail dated March 30, 1981

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  Airmail unilateral postal card with the original stamp of the USSR (1980) in memory of the extra-long flight Il-18 D Moscow - Antarctica - Moscow and with special cancellation dated February 10, 1981

• Air; Airmail; Airmail lines // Philatelic dictionary / Comp. O. Ya. Basin. - M .: Communication, 1968 .-- 164 p. (Retrieved October 6, 2017) Archived June 12, 2016.
• “Air” and articles starting with Airmail // Big Philatelic Dictionary / N. I. Vladinets, L. I. Ilyichev, I. Ya. Levitas ... [and others ] ; under the general. ed. N.I. Vladinets and V.A. Jacobs. - M .: Radio and communications, 1988. - S. 7-8. - 40,000 copies. - ISBN 5-256-00175-2 . (Retrieved October 6, 2017) Archived on September 28, 2015.
• Blekhman S. Mail delivers a plane // Philately USSR. - 1967. - No. 9.
• Langer F. Pink Mercury. What brands said. - M .: Communication, 1969 .-- 224 p. [Cm. Hyderabad - Airmail .] (Retrieved June 15, 2016) Archived June 15, 2016.
• Post items avia // Large Philatelic Dictionary / N. I. Vladinets, L. I. Ilyichev, I. Ya. Levitas ... [ and others ] ; under the general. ed. N.I. Vladinets and V.A. Jacobs. - M .: Radio and communications, 1988. - S. 216. - 40 000 copies. - ISBN 5-256-00175-2 . (Retrieved May 9, 2016) Archived on May 9, 2016.
• Pritula V.V. Postal Lighthouses of the Fifth Ocean. - M .: Radio and communications, 1982. - 104 p. - (Ser. Library of the Young Philatelist; Issue 12).
• Sorkin Ye. B. Mail hurries to people. - M .: Knowledge, 1977 .-- 128 p. [Cm. On swift wings .]
• Standard Handbook of Stamp Collecting / Committee on Publications. - New York, NY, USA: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979. - P. 207-221. - ISBN 0-690-01773-1 . (eng.)

• Novoselov V. A. Chapter 11. Different mails are needed, different stamps are important. Airmail (unopened) . Acquaintance with philately: The world of philately . Smolensk: World m @ rock; Union of Philatelists of Russia (October 30, 2008). - EBook. Date of treatment June 18, 2016. Archived June 18, 2016.
• Airmail (unopened) . Russian-English explanatory dictionary of philatelic terms - A. Young philatelist . Belpost . Date of treatment October 20, 2009. Archived May 19, 2012.
• Archive of articles on airmail on the site “The Ukrainian Weekly” (USA) (English) (inaccessible link) Checked May 2018.
• “Germany Airmail” - a section of German airmail in the Evert Klaseboer catalog ( Dutch. Evert Klaseboer )
• Flugausfallstempel (German) . Lexikon - Buchstabe "F" . Kamp-Lintfort , Germany: Phila-Lexikon; Gert WF Murmann. - Articles starting with Flug- in the Phila-Lexikon dictionary by Herth Murmann (Germany). Date of treatment January 25, 2016. Archived January 25, 2016.
• Die Flugpost am Rhein und Main 1912 Archived February 11, 2008. - an article by Heinz Freisler ( German: Heinz Freisler ) about airmail on the Rhine and Main in 1912 on the website of the philatelic society of Rödelheim ( Briefmarkenverein , Germany) (German) Archived on September 15, 2008.