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  • Commemorative Stamp
  • 12 February 2011

100 Years of Airmail

Postcard and Letter of the First Airmail

A postcard and letter of the first airmail, one of four stamps for a hundred years of airmail in India.

Date of issue February 12, 2011
Denomination Rs. 5
Quantity printed 400000
Printer India Security Press, Nashik
Perforation 13
Watermark No Watermark
Colours Multicolor
Printing process Wet Offset
Credit Sh. Sankha Samanta
Catalogue codes Michel IN 2559 Stamp Number IN 2493 Yvert et Tellier IN 2321 Stanley Gibbons IN 2800 WADP Numbering System - WNS IN011.2011

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About this stamp

On the Stamp

A postcard and a letter flown in 1911, with the First Aerial Post and U.P. Exhibition cancellations.

A Hundred Years of Airmail

India Post issued four ₹5 stamps and a ₹20 miniature sheet on 12 February 2011, the opening day of Indipex 2011, the world philatelic exhibition in New Delhi, for a hundred years of airmail. On 18 February 1911 the French pilot Henri Pequet, in India for an air show at the United Provinces Exhibition in Allahabad, flew about 6,500 letters across the Yamuna to Naini, some ten kilometres away, in a Humber-Sommer biplane: the first official airmail flight. The letters were marked “First Aerial Post, U.P. Exhibition Allahabad 1911”. India Post’s brochure for this issue is not online, so this text draws on Wikipedia and on the stamps themselves.

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