Indian Night Air Mail Service Launched in 1949

"Night Air Mail Service" was launched on January 30, 1949 in India by Rafi Ahmed Kidwai to improve the postal service. Air Mail Service was introduced when Railway Mail and Motor Mail had reached saturation point.

Since space was a premium at daytime flights, it was decided that air mail would move at night and this had the added advantage of making overnight delivery possible in what may very well be also the world's first example if not one of the earliest examples of a hub-and-spoke operation. Under this system, the four main cities of India also happened to form each of the four corners of a diamond- New Delhi to the north, Bombay to the west, Calcutta to the east, and Madras to the south. Connecting these cities was a central location at the city of Nagpur in central India. 

The system was quite simple- letters postmarked for overnight air mail were delivered to each of the corners of the NAM system in the evening and loaded on aircraft. These aircraft, all then flew in the first part of the night to the central processing and sort facility at the Nagpur Airport. Mail would be offloaded and sorted to waiting aircraft that would return to their origin airports in the second half of the night. The following morning, the mail would be delivered- a speed and convenience not only unheard of an India's business environment of the day, but probably in just about any business center worldwide in 1949! For an aircraft like the Douglas DC-3 that was ubiquitous in those days, each leg would take about four hours, making overnight delivery possible. To facilitate the sort process, any aircraft leaving any of the cities already had the mail sorted and stowed aboard in batches, minimizing the ground sort and loading time at Nagpur. 

The Indian Night Air Mail Service ran continuously until 1973 (ironically when Federal Express launched its overnight package delivery service). The low postal rates provided by the Indian government were cited as not being enough to warrant continuation of this historic service. Various attempts were made up into the 1980s to restart the NAM, but were never profitable enough to last long.