All American Pick up First Flight Grove City Pennsylvania - Philadelphia - 1939

Description

During 1939 the Post Office Department established experimental service utilizing small planes equipped with a patented pick-up and delivery device, thus permitting the smallest cities to dispatch and receive local air mail service.
Smaller planes, equipped with patented devices, permitting pick-up and delivery, without stops, serve these routes. A large number of smaller communities received service by each experimental route, the mail making connection with regular services at terminal cities.
The experimental routes were numbered 1001 and 1002.
The experiment proved successful, and a regular contract was granted at the end of the year. Accordingly, many additional cities were authorized to receive service. The regular service was designated as Air Mail Route 49.
The pick-up service proved too costly for the benefits obtained and in January 1949 its discontinuance was authorized by the Civil Aeronautics Board. It was replaced, at the larger Air Mail Route 49 cities, by regular airline service over Air Mail Route 97, provided by the same carrier. Air Mail Route 49 service was discontinued gradually as Air Mail Route 97 service was inaugurated, starting with the initial segment on March 7, 1949.
This cover was carried on the May 14, 1939 Experimenmtal Air Mail Route 1001 inaugural flight from Grove City, Pennsylvania to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and is listed in the Contract Air Mail Flights (CAM) Section of The American Air Mail Catalogue as P1E8.
The Grove City Postmaster autographed the cover.
Allegheny Airlines became the new name of All American Airways on January 1, 1953.
A Civil Aeronautics Board order, effective June 11, 1979, authorized the corporate title “Allegheny
Airlines” to be changed to “USAir, Inc.” The name change reflected the carrier’s geographic expansion
and increased airline status.
In early 1997 USAir changed its name to US Airways and introduced a new corporate identity.
On February 14, 2013, US Airways Group and AMR Corporation announced that the two companies would merge to form the largest airline in the world. The combined airline carries the American Airlines name.
The cover is from the collection of David L. Miller.  D
avid L. Miller was an aviation pioneer who was instrumental in development of the early air mail pick-up techniques that gave birth to All American Aviation.