High times
On 9 September 1911 pioneering British aviator, Gustav Hamel successfully piloted the inaugural flight of the world’s first scheduled airmail service.
Hamel's historic 20-mile flight from Hendon Aerodrome in London to the Postmaster General’s office in Windsor, took just 18 minutes. He even managed to write a postcard of his own mid-flight.
It was the first of 16 aerial post flights to mark the coronation of King George V. The month-long service took place until 26 September 1911, during which time 130,000 specially designed souvenir postcards and envelopes were delivered.
One hundred years later, on 9 September 2011, we issued a set of Special Stamps to mark the centenary of Hamel receiving the first mail bag while sitting in the cockpit of his Blériot XI monoplane at Hendon Aerodrome. The Aerial Post stamps tell the story of this historic flight and features original photography of key events from the day.
On 14 June 1919, aviators Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten-Brown completed the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic, carrying with them hundreds of letters in a mail bag, the first transatlantic mail.
In the same year Aircraft Transport and Travel, which eventually became British Airways, carried the first public airmail on scheduled services from London to Paris. Later that year, the service was extended to other parts of Europe.
In June of this year, we issued a commemorative postbox, special postmark and online gallery to mark the centenary of Alcock and Brown’s first transatlantic airmail flight. The postbox was unveiled on Harlington High Street, close to Heathrow Airport, the home of our Heathrow Worldwide Distribution Centre (HWDC). The postmark appeared on all stamped mail on Friday 14 and Saturday 15 June.
Today, Royal Mail exports to more than 250 destinations using scheduled flights of 55 airlines from London Heathrow and London Gatwick airports. We dispatch around one million items every night. HWDC has seven miles of conveyor systems and a fully automated floor area of 51,000 metres – that’s about the size of six football pitches.
Domestic mail now also regularly travels by plane. Airports used for internal mail include Exeter, Stanstead, Edinburgh and Belfast. You might even catch a glimpse of the Boeing 737 that flies in full Royal Mail livery.
