#AIRMAIL INTERNATIONAL SERIES#

Unfortunately the bag broke when it hit the ground, but all of the mail was eventually recovered and forwarded by regular channels with the cancellation reading 'AEROPLANE STATION No.1 – GARDEN CITY ESTATES, N.Y.' Emphasizing the concept, in 1912 the United States printed a 20-cent stamp in the Parcel Post series showing a flying machine and titled, 'AEROPLANE CARRYING MAIL'. air mail pilot in history, Ovington took off in his own American-made Bleriot Queen tractor-type monoplane, Dragonfly, at 5:26 PM and dropped the bag of mail over Mineola six minutes later from an altitude of 500 feet. Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock as the first U.S. Ovington flew 640 letters and 1,280 postcards from the Aero Club of New York's airfield located on Nassau Boulevard near Stratford School in Garden City ( Long Island), New York, to the nearby Mineola Post Office in Mineola, located less than six miles away. The first official experiment at flying air mail to be made under the aegis of the United States Post Office Department took place on September 23, 1911, on the first day of an International Air Meet sponsored by The Nassau Aviation Corporation of Long Island, when pilot Earle L.

Balloon mail was also carried on an 1877 flight in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1959 the United States Postal Service issued a 7-cent stamp (C-54) commemorating Wise's flight in the Jupiter. One month later, on August 17, Wise flew from Lafayette, Indiana, to Crawfordsville, Indiana, and carried 123 letters and 23 circulars on board that had been collected by the postmaster Thomas Wood and endorsed 'PREPAID' but only one of these historic postal covers was discovered in 1957. Louis, Missouri, to Henderson, New York, a distance of 1,290 km on which he carried a mailbag entrusted to him by the American Express Company. John Wise piloted an unofficial balloon post flight that took place on July 17, 1859, from St. Wise ascends on the first United States balloon airmail from Lafayette, Indiana in 1859.ĭuring the first aerial flight in North America by balloon on January 9, 1793, from Philadelphia to Deptford Township, 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. Domestic air mail became obsolete in 1975 as a distinct extra fee service, and international air mail in 1995, when the USPS began transporting all First Class long-distance intercity mail by air on a routine basis. Army Air Forces temporarily took over the routes-with disastrous results-when all CAM contracts were summarily cancelled by President Franklin D. The exclusive transportation of flown mails by government operated aircraft came to an end in 1926 under the provisions of the 'Kelly Act' which required the USPOD to transition to contracting with commercial air carriers to fly them over Contract Air Mail (CAM) routes to be established by the Department, although during the first half of 1934 the U.S. Air Mail was formally established as a new class of service by the Post Office Department on May 15, 1918, with the inauguration of the Washington–Philadelphia–New York route for which the first of special Air Mail stamps were issued. Letters and parcels intended for air mail service were marked as 'Via Air Mail' (or equivalent), appropriately franked, and assigned to any then existing class or sub-class of the Air Mail service.Īfter an intermittent series of government sponsored experimental flights between 19, domestic U.S. United States airmail was a service class of the United States Post Office Department (USPOD) and its successor United States Postal Service (USPS) delivering air mail by aircraft flown within the United States and its possessions and territories.

PHILA.' '– FIRST TRIP' 'PHILA.' (Type: USPOD CDS w/killer bars) Air Mail stamp, the 24 Cent 'Jenny'(C-3). Cover flown on the first day of scheduled Air Mail Service in the U.S.

Airmail international