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(February 2011)| Airmail (or air mail) is a mail transport
service branded and sold on the basis of being airborne. Airmail
items typically arrive more quickly than surface mail, and
usually cost more to send. Airmail may be the only option for
sending mail to some destinations, such as overseas, if the mail
cannot wait the time it would take to arrive by ship, sometimes
weeks. The Universal Postal Union adopted comprehensive rules
for airmail at its 1929 Postal Union Congress in London. Since
the official language of the Universal Postal Union is French,
airmail items world-wide are often marked Par avion , literally:
"by airplane". For about the first half century of its
existence, transportation of mail via aircraft was usually
categorized and sold as a separate service (airmail) from
surface mail. Today it is often the case that mail service is
categorized and sold according to transit time alone, with mode
of transport (land, sea, air) being dec