Aeropostale: The legend pilots who associated the world via airmail

What do two significant public carriers, an American form retail mark, an enormous openly recorded modern enterprise, a Hollywood film and a few award winning scholarly works all share for all intents and purpose?

They are completely connected to the remarkable tradition of an aircraft that failed to exist a long time back this year.

Notwithstanding its moderately fleeting presence, from 1918 to 1931, the "Compagnie générale aéropostale," typically referred to just as Aéropostale, made a permanent imprint, both in the realm of regular citizen avionics and in the public creative mind.

Right toward the finish of The Second Great War, French flight pioneer Pierre-Georges Latécoère made a truth of his vision to lay out an ordinary air interface conveying mail among Europe and Latin America.

The firm that came to be known as Aéropostale was established toward the finish of 1918 under the authority name of "Société des lignes Latécoère."

In the ten years that followed, this undertaking wouldn't just contribute hugely to the combination of air transportation as a fundamental help in various regions of the planet, yet in addition became inseparable from experience and boldness. The account of Aerópostale is maybe the last enormous amazing story of the time of investigation.

Aéropostale's long course begun in Toulouse, in the south of France. From that point it crossed the Pyrenees to Barcelona, followed Spain's Mediterranean coast to Alicante and afterward over to North Africa, which at the time was under Spanish and French rule.

The line proceeded with south along Morocco's Atlantic coast, with a few waypoints en route: Casablanca, Agadir, Cape Juby/Tarfaya and the present-day urban communities of Dakhla, Nouadhibou and Holy person Louis, until it arrived at its African end at Dakar, in Senegal.

Given the impediments of airplane at that point, mail was then stacked on board sends that spanned the South Atlantic at its tightest point, between West Africa and northeastern Brazil.

From that point, the Latin American part of Aéropostale dominated. Its planes fled the whole way to Buenos Aires and then some. The Argentinian capital went about as a center from which various territorial courses sprung, taking air mail across the Andes to Santiago de Chile, north to Paraguay and south towards Patagonia.

A magnet for travelers

This endeavor was not for the cowardly. Notwithstanding the risks of 1920s flying, which was a fairly hazardous and awkward work, Aéropostale's pilots needed to cross tremendous districts under outrageous environment conditions and without any help foundation.

Be that as it may, this may likewise have been essential for the appeal.

Aéropostale figured out how to draw in the absolute most bold pilots of the time, pilots, for example, Jean Mermoz and Antoine de Holy person Exupéry, of "Le Petit Ruler'' notoriety. These were trying globe-trotters, yet in addition capable scribes. Furthermore, how their long, unsafe excursions were deified in a progression of grant winning books, and later motion pictures, would hugely add to the unbelievable quality of Aéropostale.

Holy person Exupéry's "Vol de Nuit" (Night Flight), for instance, was a prompt achievement when it was first distributed in 1931, and the story was adjusted for film by John Passage in his 1932 film "Air Mail." It portrays the creator's endeavors on Aéropostale's Chilean run.

The Andes' 20,000-foot-high pinnacles introduced an imposing deterrent to the delicate airplane of the time. In one of the book's entries Holy person Exupéry recounts the narrative of his nearby Aéropostale buddy Henri Guillaumet, who, in the wake of crashing his plane on an Andean ice sheet spent a few days on a legendary trip across snow and ice. He figured out how to arrive at a far off Argentinian settlement when he was near the very edge of capitulating to cold and exhaustion.

This kind of epic would be trailed by "Terre des Hommes" (meant English as "Wind, Sand and Stars"), about Holy person Exupéry's own experience flying in the Sahara desert. Pilots needed to depend on crude route and there was many times the gamble of running out of fuel or encountering specialized troubles. Pilots making crisis arrivals in the desert gambled being caught by neighborhood traveling clans who might then endeavor to deliver them.

This book likewise incorporates Holy person Exupéry's own brush with death, currently in his post-Aéropostale period, after crash-arriving in the Egyptian desert. Holy person Exupéry and his co-pilot got through a difficult desert venture in which they were near passing on from thirst prior to being safeguarded by a Bedouin tribesmen.

This spearheading soul was not restrictive to the pilots.

The narrative of Raymond Galtié is a valid example. Brought into the world in 1901 in the south of France, he enlisted in the French naval force's submarine arm as a youngster. In the wake of serving all through The Second Great War years, Galtié left the naval force in 1922 to join Aéropostale, where he filled in as a specialist.

"Mechanics around then were in many cases flying along with popular pilots, like Mermoz or Holy person Exupéry. They grew dear kinships since they spent numerous hours together in those little, delicate airplane," says Sònia Galtié, Raymond Galtié's granddaughter, who as of late went over a store of old family photos.

This drove her to additional exploration the existence of her granddad and of Aéropostale. She ran over a few sites and discussions which praise the memory of the carrier and this affectionate local area of individuals dedicated to the headway of flying.

Raymond Galtié's commitment with Aéropostale had a cheerful completion. He ventured to the far corners of the planet, working at a few of the company's stations in Latin America and Europe and later proceeded to have a fruitful vocation with Air France.

Yet, this was not the destiny of the association's most popular pilots.

Mermoz, Holy person Exupéry and Guillaumet would all end their days unfortunately in charge of their airplane soon after Aéropostale's death.

The last two vanished while working in the Mediterranean during The Second Great War, in 1944 and 1940 separately, probably because of adversary activity (an airplane wreck tracked down close to Marseilles in 2003 has since been decidedly recognized as Holy person Exupéry's airplane).

Mermoz in the mean time was lost in December 1936, when he was crossing the South Atlantic, in an occurrence which some have credited to disrupt, despite the fact that motor unwavering quality issues might have been a more probable reason.

A durable heritage

In spite of the fact that he remained inseparably connected to the flying business for his entire life and proceeded to fabricate one of France's biggest aviation organizations, the Groupe Latécoère, which actually exists today, in 1927 Pierre-Georges Latécoère offered the air mail business to Marcel Bouilloux-Lafont, a French lender and legislator who gave it another name: "Compagnie Générale Aéropostale".

By 1930 Aéropostale had developed into an enormous coordinated factors activity, shipping 32 million letters each year more than 17,000 kilometers of air and ocean courses (Aéropostale likewise worked an armada of eight ships) that rode three mainlands.

In that exact same year, Jean Mermoz, one of the company's unbelievable pilots, would close the Atlantic hole in charge of a Latécoère 28 seaplane stacked with 122 kilos of mail. It required 19 hours and 35 minutes for Mermoz to fly among Senegal and Brazil. Albeit standard sea intersections would keep on being finished by transport, Mermoz had shown that it was workable for a letter from France to arrive at Santiago de Chile in just four days.

However, not long after arriving at its pinnacle, Aéropostale abruptly collapsed.

The 1929 monetary emergency seriously affected the firm and political precariousness in Brazil and Argentina added to the hardships. In 1931 the French government denied an interest for monetary assistance and Aéropostale was exchanged before long. Its resources were consumed by the gathering of organizations that would ultimately become Air France.

The Aéropostale brand was anyway held via Air France, which involved it for a portion of its mail and freight exercises, worked mutually with the French postal help (La Poste), until 2000.

La Poste then got full responsibility for business, which was rebranded as Europe Airpost, prior to selling it once more, this chance to an Irish organization called ASL Aeronautics Gathering, which works traveler and freight trips right up 'til now under the ASL Aircrafts brand.

Aéropostale's legacy lives on in the Southern Side of the equator as well.

The company's Argentinian organization, known as Aeroposta Argentina, continued to work well after the end of its European parent, since it gave the main non military personnel normal air administration in the country. It would ultimately be nationalized and converged with different carriers to shape Aerolineas Argentinas in 1946.

Likewise - maybe in light of the stunning characters of individuals engaged with its activity and the exceptional scholarly work they abandoned - the ubiquity of Aéropostale has risen above the bounds of the flight world to move the naming of a US style corporate store (that has no connection to the first Aéropostale, in any case).

However, nothing beats the genuine article.

As we mark the 90th commemoration of its destruction, Aéropostale fans get an opportunity to re-establish the accomplishments of Mermoz, Guillaumet and Holy person Exupéry by partaking in the Strike Latécoère-Aéropostale, a significant distance air rally that, starting around 2008, has consistently followed the old Aéropostale courses all through Africa and Latin America.