Airmails of the United States or U.S. Air Mail relates to the servicing of flown mails by the U.S. postal system within the United States, its possessions, and/or territories, marked as "Via Air Mail" (or equivalent), appropriately franked, and afforded any then existing class or sub-class of U.S. Air Mail service.
After an intermittent series of government sponsored experimental flights between 1911 and 1918, domestic U.S. Air Mail was formally established as a new class of service by the United States 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.
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. Army Air Force temporarily took over the routes — with disastrous results — when all CAM contracts were summarily cancelled by President Franklin D. Roosevelt owing to the Air Mail Scandal. Domestic air mail became obsolete in 1975, and international air mail in 1995, as distinct extra fee services when the USPS began transporting all First Class long distance intercity mail by air on a routine basis.
Read more about Airmails Of The United States: Experimental Airmails, The Conversion To Commercially Flown Air Mail, The End of Domestic U.S. Air Mail As A Distinct Service, US Army Air Mail Pilots (1918), See Also
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united and/or states:
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The recognition of Russia on November 16, 1933, started forces which were to have considerable influence in the attempt to collectivize the United States.”
—Herbert Hoover (18741964)
“Colonel Bat Guano: Okay, Im going to get your money for you. But if you dont get the President of the United States on that phone, you know whats going to happen to you?
Group Captain Lionel Mandrake: What?
Colonel Bat Guano: Youre going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)