100 years ago, airmail took flight!

PARIS: On December 25, 1918 a daring French industrialist launched the world’s first ever airmail service, flying between the southwestern French city of Toulouse and Barcelona in northeastern Spain.

It was the beginning of an adventure which would soon see pioneering pilots from the company, best known as Aeropostale, delivering letters to Morocco, Senegal in Africa and later to Latin America.

The plan for a regular airmail service was dreamt up in the last months of World War I by visionary captain of industry, Pierre-Georges Latecoere. If it were to work, he would have to build more efficient planes at his Toulouse factory.

It seemed sheer madness in an era when pilots navigated by sight, without sophisticated onboard instruments, and did not even have sealed cockpits, their heads open to the elements.

"I’ve redone all the calculations, they confirm the opinion of specialists. Our idea is unachievable," Latecoere said. "There is only one thing left for us to do, that is to carry it out." When his Salmson biplane set out for Barcelona on Christmas Day in 1918, Latecoere sat behind the pilot, Rene Cornemont, according to the book "Aeropostale" (2010).

The plane made the trip in two hours and 20 minutes with its sack of letters and parcels. Civilian airmail was born. Nine months later, in September 1919 and using Breguet 14 planes, the airmail link between France and its colony Morocco was launched, led by former fighter pilot Didier Daurat. Under a contract with the French state, eight monthly flights from Toulouse to Rabat would be made.