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Postage stamp for mail transported by air

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.

With aviation developments, several countries started to experiment with flights, and postal authorities considered flying the mails. Initially flights were unofficial, but some flights such as the 1877 Buffalo balloon flight, carried mail, to which stamp like labels were affixed. At the beginning airmail letters cost more than surface mail. Both airmail stamps and stamps surcharged for airmail were issued, though some countries restricted the use of airmail stamps only to letters sent by airmail, while others allowed them to be used for other mail services. The first stamp depicting an aeroplane was a US 20 cent parcel post stamp issued on 1 January 1913 but not intended for airmail duty: the set of 12 showed transportation and delivery methods. Four years later an airmail stamp was issued in Italy. Several of the early ones were produced by surcharging other stamps with overprints; at first in 1917, Italy used express stamps; regular stamps were used by Austria in 1918, Sweden used official stamps in 1920. Airmail items from the early days are expensive due to the popularity of this collecting area. Specialised catalogues and albums are produced for collectors of airmail stamps and other aerophilatelic items. Many airmail stamps feature aviation themes

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. The error is one of the most well known airmail stamps.

Semi official airmail stamps are not issued by the postal authority but have official sanction and are sometimes used for local posts, they are more accurately referred to a labels rather than stamps. For example, as noted above the privately produced 5¢ Buffalo balloon stamps were used on June 18, 1877, for a balloon flight from Nashville to Gallatin, Tennessee.