Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
And here's a detail image from another FFC from the same airmail route, AM 93:
As you can see, both Silver City and the nearby town of Hurley are named in the cachet, as they perhaps should be: Silver City was and still is the commercial centre Grant County. Hurley, in 1951, was a company town owned by Kennecott Copper Corporation, and the corporate offices of Kennecott's Chino Division, as well as its copper smelter, were in Hurley. I've actually wondered whether Kennecott lobbied to include Hurley and Silver City in in Frontier's service. It's easy to imagine that Kennecott executives were frequent fliers into the Grant County Airport once it was open.
But why weren't FFCs produced for some other nearby communities, which also had post offices and were actually closer to the airport than Silver City? Santa Rita was about the same size as Silver City in terms of population, and the location of what was then the largest open pit copper mine in the world. The town of Bayard, between Silver City and Hurley, had a larger population than Hurley. Who decides whether FFC's will even be produced?
I know that it's tempting to think of FFCs as purely philatelic, and their pricing (generally really cheap!) certainly fosters that idea. A few thousand each of the Silver City and Hurley covers were produced. But some aren't common -- I've been looking for years for FFCs for the A.M. 93 West flight, which took place later the same day; only a few hundred covers for that flight were produced. FFCs can be significant historical documents. Note that the cachet includes the towns of Lordsburg (yep, it really is a place -- "Lord, what a burg!" we used to say!) and Deming, New Mexico. Less than two years after Silver City and Hurley got airmail service, the Civil Aviation Board closed commercial service to the airports in Lordsburg and Deming, as well as smaller towns on the same route in Arizona. The reason cited was low passenger numbers and high mail subsidies.
There's one more reason why these covers interest me. Frontier Airlines provided the first-ever airline service to larger population centres from Grant County. The area had always been a backwater. As late as 1936, there were no paved highways leading out of Grant County. When I was in my teens, Frontier provided several flights a day to Phoenix and El Paso; in 1958 service to El Paso ended but Albuquerque was added. When I was in the navy, I flew home on leave on Frontier several times. Frontier went bust sometime in the 1980s as I recall; several small airlines have provided service since then, but never on the Frontier's scale. Today, there are flights only between Grant County Airport and Albuquerque, provided by Boutique Air.
Bob
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I assume that you noticed that both covers are addressed to the same person in Massachusetts using plate number stamps, so these are obviously philatelic contrivances. Who knows what influences the sender and receiver had in manufacturing these covers. That's why I find crash covers more compelling. At least you HOPE nobody contrived those!
Lars
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So... from what I understand about First Flight Covers is that the sender and the receiver are one and the same. In the philatelic press would be an announcement that Airline A will have a first flight from point B to point C with stops at D, E, F & G. There would be addresses for the various towns in care of the postmaster. One can send SAEs addressed to oneself to each stop one is interested in. Eventually, the cover would arrive in one's mailbox with a proper cachet, postmarked and usually backstamped. And there you would have a genuine FFC. I'm sure that all FFCs are philatelic in nature.
Not sure when the practice stopped. In more recent times some hardcore collectors would find information about a new route and try to get FFCs postmarked and some of these are extremely rare - maybe only 12 or so covers carried.
Tad
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07:48:13pm
" .... I'm sure that all FFCs are philatelic in nature....."
I'd say that you are partly right. A first Flight cover is an envelope that actually carried mail and just happened to be sent on some opening of a new route.
That led to contrived souvenirs such as have been shown bearing those pre-planned attractive cachets that so many collectors favor.
In as much as the cacheted envelopes may have flown on some new flight or service route they do document that service and are a part of philatelic history.
Since the cachet may have been added to all mail in the mail bag, it's mere presence is not definitive. Because there were instances where, for some reason, the flight was cancelled or overloaded and extra covers, all properly cancelled were sent by rail to the destination.
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I just ran across this thread when I was searching for just what I had said about these covers in previous posts! (The Stamporama discussion board is a great archive!) Anyway...
cdj1122 said,
"...there were instances where, for some reason, the flight was cancelled or overloaded and extra covers, all properly cancelled were sent by rail to the destination."
I agree. Of course Charlie is correct. But sometimes provenance can prove a point. In the case of these covers, I know that they're the real deal, because my dad was there. At the time, he was editor of the Silver City (New Mexico) Enterprise and he covered both the opening of the Silver City-Grant County Airport for the newspaper as well as the inaugural flight of Frontier Airlines. He talked himself into the jumpseat of the Frontier Airlines DC-3 for a flight around what we called the "Mining District," location of the huge Kennecott open-pit copper mine and the Empire Zinc Mine at Hanover, which was in the middle of an infamous labour strike that was the longest at the time in the U.S. and became the subject of debate in Congress (back when they actually had debates in Congress!).
FYI, here's a postcard of a Frontier Airlines DC-3 of that period:
and a real-photo postcard picturing the Kennecott copper mine as it was at that time...
That mountain in the distance? It's known as the "Kneeling Nun". Legend has it that a nun fell in love with a conquistador, confessed her sin, and was turned to stone. Here's a postcard showing the nun...
And a close-up...
In 1961, a friend and I climbed up to that scree slope. The larger blocks are the size of small houses. Really. We tried to climb the cliff, but weren't successful.
I haven't been back to New Mexico in more than 20 years, but I understand that blasting at the mine weakened the substrate around the "nun" so much that the company decided to stabilize it with cables.
Bob
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"So... from what I understand about First Flight Covers is that the sender and the receiver are one and the same. In the philatelic press would be an announcement that Airline A will have a first flight from point B to point C with stops at D, E, F & G. There would be addresses for the various towns in care of the postmaster. One can send SAEs addressed to oneself to each stop one is interested in. Eventually, the cover would arrive in one's mailbox with a proper cachet, postmarked and usually backstamped. And there you would have a genuine FFC. I'm sure that all FFCs are philatelic in nature."
Bob, your question about other towns closer to the airport is a good one. As in the quote above, there may have been a notice in Linn's Stamp News or other stamp publications of the time. The APS Library has bound copies of these by year, last I looked. I borrowed 1932 when I was researching my George Washington Bicentennial covers.
Maybe get that year's edition and scan through it to see who sponsored these covers. Both are identical so one party sponsored these. Finding out these details may solve that riddle.
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An interesting idea, Tom. I'll look into it.
Bob
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I've been working on a web page about the first airmail service to my home town, Silver City, New Mexico, in 1951. Here are two Air Mail (route) 93 East first-flight covers in my collection, one from Hurley and the other from Silver City; Frontier Airlines was the airline that got the contract for Airmail Mail (route) 93. The first airmail flight (and passenger) flight from Silver City was on Dec. 1, 1951, the day after the dedication of the airport. The aircraft was a DC-3 "Sunliner" named Silver City.
And here's a detail image from another FFC from the same airmail route, AM 93:
As you can see, both Silver City and the nearby town of Hurley are named in the cachet, as they perhaps should be: Silver City was and still is the commercial centre Grant County. Hurley, in 1951, was a company town owned by Kennecott Copper Corporation, and the corporate offices of Kennecott's Chino Division, as well as its copper smelter, were in Hurley. I've actually wondered whether Kennecott lobbied to include Hurley and Silver City in in Frontier's service. It's easy to imagine that Kennecott executives were frequent fliers into the Grant County Airport once it was open.
But why weren't FFCs produced for some other nearby communities, which also had post offices and were actually closer to the airport than Silver City? Santa Rita was about the same size as Silver City in terms of population, and the location of what was then the largest open pit copper mine in the world. The town of Bayard, between Silver City and Hurley, had a larger population than Hurley. Who decides whether FFC's will even be produced?
I know that it's tempting to think of FFCs as purely philatelic, and their pricing (generally really cheap!) certainly fosters that idea. A few thousand each of the Silver City and Hurley covers were produced. But some aren't common -- I've been looking for years for FFCs for the A.M. 93 West flight, which took place later the same day; only a few hundred covers for that flight were produced. FFCs can be significant historical documents. Note that the cachet includes the towns of Lordsburg (yep, it really is a place -- "Lord, what a burg!" we used to say!) and Deming, New Mexico. Less than two years after Silver City and Hurley got airmail service, the Civil Aviation Board closed commercial service to the airports in Lordsburg and Deming, as well as smaller towns on the same route in Arizona. The reason cited was low passenger numbers and high mail subsidies.
There's one more reason why these covers interest me. Frontier Airlines provided the first-ever airline service to larger population centres from Grant County. The area had always been a backwater. As late as 1936, there were no paved highways leading out of Grant County. When I was in my teens, Frontier provided several flights a day to Phoenix and El Paso; in 1958 service to El Paso ended but Albuquerque was added. When I was in the navy, I flew home on leave on Frontier several times. Frontier went bust sometime in the 1980s as I recall; several small airlines have provided service since then, but never on the Frontier's scale. Today, there are flights only between Grant County Airport and Albuquerque, provided by Boutique Air.
Bob
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re: First Flight covers -- who decides?
I assume that you noticed that both covers are addressed to the same person in Massachusetts using plate number stamps, so these are obviously philatelic contrivances. Who knows what influences the sender and receiver had in manufacturing these covers. That's why I find crash covers more compelling. At least you HOPE nobody contrived those!
Lars
Login to Like
this post
re: First Flight covers -- who decides?
So... from what I understand about First Flight Covers is that the sender and the receiver are one and the same. In the philatelic press would be an announcement that Airline A will have a first flight from point B to point C with stops at D, E, F & G. There would be addresses for the various towns in care of the postmaster. One can send SAEs addressed to oneself to each stop one is interested in. Eventually, the cover would arrive in one's mailbox with a proper cachet, postmarked and usually backstamped. And there you would have a genuine FFC. I'm sure that all FFCs are philatelic in nature.
Not sure when the practice stopped. In more recent times some hardcore collectors would find information about a new route and try to get FFCs postmarked and some of these are extremely rare - maybe only 12 or so covers carried.
Tad
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
04 Dec 2015
07:48:13pm
re: First Flight covers -- who decides?
" .... I'm sure that all FFCs are philatelic in nature....."
I'd say that you are partly right. A first Flight cover is an envelope that actually carried mail and just happened to be sent on some opening of a new route.
That led to contrived souvenirs such as have been shown bearing those pre-planned attractive cachets that so many collectors favor.
In as much as the cacheted envelopes may have flown on some new flight or service route they do document that service and are a part of philatelic history.
Since the cachet may have been added to all mail in the mail bag, it's mere presence is not definitive. Because there were instances where, for some reason, the flight was cancelled or overloaded and extra covers, all properly cancelled were sent by rail to the destination.
Login to Like
this post
re: First Flight covers -- who decides?
I just ran across this thread when I was searching for just what I had said about these covers in previous posts! (The Stamporama discussion board is a great archive!) Anyway...
cdj1122 said,
"...there were instances where, for some reason, the flight was cancelled or overloaded and extra covers, all properly cancelled were sent by rail to the destination."
I agree. Of course Charlie is correct. But sometimes provenance can prove a point. In the case of these covers, I know that they're the real deal, because my dad was there. At the time, he was editor of the Silver City (New Mexico) Enterprise and he covered both the opening of the Silver City-Grant County Airport for the newspaper as well as the inaugural flight of Frontier Airlines. He talked himself into the jumpseat of the Frontier Airlines DC-3 for a flight around what we called the "Mining District," location of the huge Kennecott open-pit copper mine and the Empire Zinc Mine at Hanover, which was in the middle of an infamous labour strike that was the longest at the time in the U.S. and became the subject of debate in Congress (back when they actually had debates in Congress!).
FYI, here's a postcard of a Frontier Airlines DC-3 of that period:
and a real-photo postcard picturing the Kennecott copper mine as it was at that time...
That mountain in the distance? It's known as the "Kneeling Nun". Legend has it that a nun fell in love with a conquistador, confessed her sin, and was turned to stone. Here's a postcard showing the nun...
And a close-up...
In 1961, a friend and I climbed up to that scree slope. The larger blocks are the size of small houses. Really. We tried to climb the cliff, but weren't successful.
I haven't been back to New Mexico in more than 20 years, but I understand that blasting at the mine weakened the substrate around the "nun" so much that the company decided to stabilize it with cables.
Bob
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this post
re: First Flight covers -- who decides?
"So... from what I understand about First Flight Covers is that the sender and the receiver are one and the same. In the philatelic press would be an announcement that Airline A will have a first flight from point B to point C with stops at D, E, F & G. There would be addresses for the various towns in care of the postmaster. One can send SAEs addressed to oneself to each stop one is interested in. Eventually, the cover would arrive in one's mailbox with a proper cachet, postmarked and usually backstamped. And there you would have a genuine FFC. I'm sure that all FFCs are philatelic in nature."
Bob, your question about other towns closer to the airport is a good one. As in the quote above, there may have been a notice in Linn's Stamp News or other stamp publications of the time. The APS Library has bound copies of these by year, last I looked. I borrowed 1932 when I was researching my George Washington Bicentennial covers.
Maybe get that year's edition and scan through it to see who sponsored these covers. Both are identical so one party sponsored these. Finding out these details may solve that riddle.
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re: First Flight covers -- who decides?
An interesting idea, Tom. I'll look into it.
Bob
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