In 1926 the company assigned Jean Mermoz to the Casablanca-Dakar airmail link. This meant two planes for that route, one to provide assistance to the other in the case of a forced landing. Civilian airmail was born.ДЄviators Jean Dabry (L), Leopold Gimie (R) and Jean Mermoz flew the first commercial crossing of the South Atlantic in May 1930 The plane made the trip in two hours and 20 minutes with its sack of letters and parcels. When his Salmson biplane set out for Barcelona on Christmas Day in 1918, Latecoere sat behind the pilot, Rene Cornemont, according to the book 'Aeropostale' (2010). 'There is only one thing left for us to do, that is to carry it out.' Our idea is unachievable,' Latecoere said. 'I've redone all the calculations, they confirm the opinion of specialists. It seemed sheer madness in an era when pilots navigated by sight, without sophisticated onboard instruments, and did not even have sealed cockpits, their heads open to the elements. If it were to work, he would have to build more efficient planes at his Toulouse factory. The plan for a regular airmail service was dreamt up in the last months of World War I by visionary captain of industry, Pierre-Georges Latecoere.

It was the beginning of an adventure which would soon see pioneering pilots from the company, best known as Aeropostale, delivering letters to Morocco, Senegal in Africa and later to Latin America.

Regular airmail