Latécoère 380  The Latécoère 380 was a flying boat airplane built in France in 1928 for use on Aéropostale's mail routes to South America. The plane later saw military service as a maritime patrol aircraft. It was a conventional flying boat design with a parasol wing braced to sponsons on the fuselage sides, and two engines mounted in a tandem push-pull pair. In September 1931, it was used to set six world seaplane records, including three speed-with-load-over-distance records and a closed circuit distance-with-load record of . A second mail plane was constructed soon afterwards, with the three military examples following in 1934.