How does Air Mail work? What does the Air Mail chain look like?
Airmail is probably the oldest air cargo service. Generally there is one postal organisation per country. In the old days tariffs with the airlines were negotiated by the government as owner. The home carriers were and are often best positioned for the local postal organisation airmail flows. They transport the airmail to other countries, where the mail is exchanged against internationally established protocols and tariffs (see the site of UPU also).
A typical airmail chain consists of the following steps:
And in some more detail:
There are five basic differences between the airmail chain and the normal air cargo chain:
