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The Post Office Notice of
21st August 1931 shows that even prior to the introduction of the direct
air mail service in 1932 Cyprus was offering to carry mail by air to
quite a number of destinations around the world.
 
The notice left was issued following a new Order of Council No.1430
published in the Cyprus Gazette of 21st August 1931- shown right. It
will be noted that this notice cancels previous notice No. 62, which in
turn had cancelled two previous notices relating to air mail and rates.
This is the first air mail notice that specifically
requires superscriptions for all or part of the route upon which mail
was to travel by air. It also quite usefully defines the anticipated
number of days that could be saved over ordinary mail.
It will be noted that in three instances rates are
quoted thus, 1s 6 piastres, 2s 1 piastre, and 1s 4 piastre. This
notation was used also on the Order of Council, and one subsequent Post
Office Notice before the notation was dropped.
(Despite using the piastre, Cyprus still made
reference to shillings, it issued a 10 shilling stamp = 90 piastres,
hence 1 shilling was 9 piastres.)
Little or no air mail covers from this period have
been identified to date, do any exist, and do any of our members
actually own any? Do they carry the prescribed superscriptions, and who
applied them?
Responses to the above would be useful for inclusion
in the revised CSC Study Paper No.3
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