page_title: Airmail stamp
section_title: First airmail stamps
hierarchical_section_title: Airmail stamp / Airmail stamp / First airmail stamps
caption_attribution_description: English: US Airmail stamp: Inverted Jenny Air Mail Issue of 1918, 24c
context_page_description: An airmail stamp is a postage stamp intended to pay either an airmail fee that is charged in addition to the surface rate, or the full airmail rate, for an item of mail to be transported by air.
  Airmail stamps should not be confused with airmail etiquettes, which are affixed to mail as an instruction to the postal authority that the mail should be transmitted by air.
context_section_description: The first postage stamp to be issued for an airmail flight was in May 1917 when Poste italiane overprinted their existing special delivery stamps. The following year, the United States Post Office Department issued the first airmail stamp specifically issued for the purpose; while it does not have "airmail" or "air post" printed on it, it illustrates a Curtiss JN-4 airplane. One pane of 100 stamps were found to have an invert error, known as the Inverted Jenny, because the airplane image in the centre is inverted relative to the outer frame. The error is one of the most well known airmail stamps. Several countries, such as Germany, Finland, Russia and the United States, issued special airmail stamps, or overprinted stamps, for the Zeppelin flights that took place in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
caption: 1918 US Inverted Jenny airmail stamp
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