Born in 1901 in the south of France, he joined the French navy’s submarine arm as a teenager. The story of Raymond Galtié is a case in point. This pioneering spirit was not exclusive to the pilots. His most famous book is "Le Petit Prince." Hulton Archive/Getty Images Saint-Exupéry and his co-pilot endured a grueling desert journey in which they were close to dying of thirst before being rescued by a Bedouin tribesmen.įrench writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery pictured circa 1935. This book also includes Saint-Exupéry’s own near-death experience, already in his post-Aéropostale period, after crash-landing in the Egyptian desert. Pilots making emergency landings in the desert risked being captured by local nomadic tribes who would then attempt to ransom them. Pilots had to rely on primitive navigation and there was often the risk of running out of fuel or experiencing technical difficulties. This sort of epic would be followed by “Terre des Hommes” (translated to English as “Wind, Sand and Stars”), about Saint-Exupéry’s own experience flying in the Sahara desert. He managed to reach a remote Argentinian settlement when he was on the brink of succumbing to cold and fatigue. In one of the book’s passages Saint-Exupéry tells the story of his close Aéropostale companion Henri Guillaumet, who, after crashing his plane on an Andean glacier spent several days on an epic trek through snow and ice.
The Andes’ 20,000-foot-high peaks presented a formidable obstacle to the fragile aircraft of the time.
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Saint-Exupéry’s “Vol de Nuit” (Night Flight), for example, was an immediate success when it was first published in 1931, and the story was adapted for film by John Ford in his 1932 movie “Air Mail.” It narrates the author’s exploits on Aéropostale’s Chilean run.
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And the way their long, perilous journeys were immortalized in a series of award-winning books, and later movies, would massively contribute to the legendary aura of Aéropostale. These were not only daring adventurers, but also talented wordsmiths. In addition to the hazards of 1920s flying, which was a rather dangerous and uncomfortable job, Aéropostale’s pilots had to traverse vast regions under extreme climate conditions and devoid of any support infrastructure.īut this may also have been part of the allure.Īéropostale managed to attract some of the most intrepid aviators of the time, pilots such as Jean Mermoz and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, of “Le Petit Prince’’ fame. This enterprise was not for the faint hearted. The Argentinian capital acted as a hub from which multiple regional routes sprung, taking air mail across the Andes to Santiago de Chile, north to Paraguay and south towards Patagonia. Its planes flew the mail all the way to Buenos Aires and beyond. Given the limitations of aircraft at the time, mail was then loaded on board ships that bridged the South Atlantic at its narrowest point, between West Africa and northeastern Brazil.įrom there, the Latin American branch of Aéropostale took over.
The line continued south along Morocco’s Atlantic coast, with several waypoints along the way: Casablanca, Agadir, Cape Juby/Tarfaya and the present-day cities of Dakhla, Nouadhibou and Saint-Louis, until it reached its African terminus at Dakar, in Senegal.
From there it crossed the Pyrenees to Barcelona, followed Spain’s Mediterranean coast to Alicante and then over to North Africa, which at the time was under Spanish and French rule. The story of Aerópostale is perhaps the last big epic tale of the era of exploration.Īéropostale’s long route started in Toulouse, in the south of France. In the decade that followed, this enterprise would not only contribute enormously to the consolidation of air transportation as an essential service in different parts of the world, but also became synonymous with adventure and fearlessness. The firm that came to be known as Aéropostale was founded at the end of 1918 under the official name of “Société des lignes Latécoère.” Right at the end of World War I, French aviation pioneer Pierre-Georges Latécoère made a reality of his vision to establish a regular air link carrying mail between Europe and Latin America. They are all linked to the extraordinary legacy of an airline that ceased to exist 90 years ago this year.ĭespite its relatively short-lived existence, from 1918 to 1931, the “Compagnie générale aéropostale,” usually known simply as Aéropostale, left an indelible mark, both in the world of civilian aviation and in the public imagination. What do two major national airlines, an American fashion retail brand, a large publicly listed industrial corporation, a Hollywood movie and several prize-winning literary works all have in common?
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