It was late 1933 before Imperial Airways extended
its airmail route to Singapore.
Meanwhile, both France and The Netherlands had started regular
services to their colonies in the Far East.
KLM started a regular airmail service between Amsterdam
and Batavia in the Dutch East Indies in September 1930.
Air Orient began a regular airmail and passenger route between
Marseilles and Saigon with the first flight leaving
Marseilles on 17 January 1931.
The following cover was flown from Saigon to Marseilles by
Air Orient in 1931.
As both the Saigon Central postmark and the Marseille
backstamp are indistinct, the month is not clear.
The service took 7 days.
The first part of the route from Marseilles was to Beirut via
Naples, Corfu, Athens and Castellrosso (Rhodes)
by LO 242 seaplanes.
The mail was then flown by Breguet 280s from
Beirut via Damascus, Baghdad, Bushire, Djask, Karachi, Jodhpur,
Allahabad, Calcutta, Akyab, Rangoon and Bangkok.
The route from Karachi to Bangkok was the same as that
used on the Imperial Airways experimental flights in 1931
and their regular service in 1933.
Air Orient became part of Air France in 1933.
Mail from Hong Kong
From October 1932, mail from Hong Kong could be sent to Saigon by sea
and then flown from there to Europe.
This declined after June 1933 when KLM accepted mail
for Europe in Singapore.
In 1936, Imperial Airways extended their Eastern Route
by flying from Penang to Hong Kong via Saigon.
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All scans were made by the author.
Information on this page is taken from:
British Aerophilateic Federation Bulletin no 75, Feb 1987.