Jusqu-a Airmail Markings- A Study Ian Mcqueen !new! Today

Ian McQueen, through his meticulous study, rescued these administrative scribbles from obscurity. He proved that the smallest marking on a cover is often the most historically significant. Jusqu’a Airmail Markings: A Study is not just a catalog; it is a detective’s manual.

How did a postal clerk in London inform his counterpart in Egypt that the airmail service for this letter should stop at a specific transit point? They used . The clerk would handstamp or write "Jusqu’a Paris" or "Jusqu’a Marseille" on the cover, coupled with the precise airmail fee paid. Jusqu-a Airmail Markings- A Study Ian McQueen

Imagine a letter sent from London to Sydney in 1935. The surface rate was low, but the airmail surcharge was exorbitant. Many senders couldn’t afford to pay the airmail fee for the entire journey. However, they could afford to pay for the letter to travel by air only as far as, say, Marseilles or Singapore. From there, the letter would revert to slow surface mail (ship or train). Ian McQueen, through his meticulous study, rescued these

Over time, these administrative instructions evolved into distinct cachets. Without a study like McQueen’s, a modern collector might mistake a "Jusqu’a" marking for a routing error or defacement. In reality, it is a receipt—proof that the sender paid for a specific segment of aerial transport. Before analyzing the text, a note on the author. Ian McQueen was a British philatelist active during the mid-20th century. While he wrote on several aspects of postal history, he is most revered for his obsessive attention to the Franco-British airmail routes. Unlike generalist catalogers, McQueen focused on ephemeral data —the ink stamps, handwritten notes, and accounting marks that clerks used for mere seconds before a mailbag was sealed. How did a postal clerk in London inform

For the collector holding a faded envelope from 1935 with a violet handstamp reading "Jusqu’a Karachi," McQueen’s text is the key that unlocks the flight, the fare, and the forgotten story of that letter’s journey. It remains, quite simply, the final word on the subject. If you own a copy of Ian McQueen’s study or possess a cover bearing a "Jusqu’a" marking, philatelic libraries encourage you to submit scans to the Aerophilately Research Group to help update and preserve this vital area of postal history.

This article explores the origins of these markings, McQueen’s groundbreaking classification system, and why his 1980s study remains the gold standard for authenticating covers from the golden age of aviation. To understand why Ian McQueen’s study is essential, one must first understand the problem facing postal clerks in the 1920s and 1930s.