All American Airways Pick up First Night Flight Grove City Lytle Adams autograph

Description

During 1938 the Post Office Department invited bids on two experimental routes to test the feasibility of feeder lines to serve smaller communities where airport facilities or volume of mail were insufficient to justify regular air mail service. The experimental services proved highly successful and in 1940 contracts were let for regular service.
Smaller planes, equipped with patented devices, permitting pick-up and delivery, without stops, serve these routes. A large number of smaller communities received service by each experimental route, the mail making connection with regular services at terminal cities.
A night pick-up flight was added to Experimental Air Mail Route 1001 night pick-up on November 15, 1939.
Collector covers, with an unofficial cachet, were dispatched from Grove City, Pennsylvania.  The Grove City Postmaster autographed the cover.
Lytle S. Adams autographed the cover.
All American Aviation was founded in 1937 as a patent holding company. Its sister company, Tri-State Aviation, was founded on the same date, serving as the physical operating company. Founder Dr. Lytle Schooler Adams was the first President of both companies.
Dr. Adams had started experimenting with an airmail pick-up system in 1927, developing numerous patents on the system, which he rolled into All American Aviation in 1937. Initial flights of the airline pick-up service were made by a Stinson Reliant single engine high-wing monoplane. Mail containers were suspended from ropes or cables suspended from two poles. The aircraft swooped down with a suspended hook hanging below and snagged the rope or cable.
The cover is from the collection of David L. Miller.  D
avid L. Miller was an aviation pioneer who was instrumental in development of the early air mail pick-up techniques that gave birth to All American Aviation.
Allegheny Airlines became the new name of All American Airways on January 1, 1953.
Allegheny Airlines became the new name of All American Airways on January 1, 1953.
A Civil Aeronautics Board order, effective June 11, 1979, authorized the corporate title “Allegheny
Airlines” to be changed to “USAir, Inc.” The name change reflected the carrier’s geographic expansion
and increased airline status.
In early 1997 USAir changed its name to US Airways and introduced a new corporate identity.
On February 14, 2013, US Airways Group and AMR Corporation announced that the two companies would merge to form the largest airline in the world. The combined airline carries the American Airlines name.