Page 153 - Demo

As a result of the Airline Deregulation Act, on December 1, 1978, the old system of AM routes evolved into Air Mail being flown by individual airlines. First Flights that occurred after this date are listed in the American Air Mail Catalog (Sixth Edition, Volume 2), and are designated as %u201cFirst Flights by United States Airlines%u201d (FFUS).From the very beginning, this area of collecting First Flight covers has not been nearly as popular as collecting covers from CAM and AM flights. As a result, covers flown on many of the FFUS First Flights are quite scarce. In many case only a handful of covers were processed.In Indiana, there are only a total of 25 FFUS flights listed in the American Air Mail Catalog, and those flights are spread across nine different airlines. For some of the Indiana FFUS routes, a mere 5 covers are known. In fact, of the routes for which the number of flown covers has been recorded, only 7 flights carried more than 36 pieces of mail. And those seven flights are the only ones that have covers with cachets.Twenty-four of the twenty-five FFUS flights in Indiana originated at the Indianapolis International Airport%u2014while this terminal was in use. The terminal was opened in 1976, and closed in 2008 upon the construction of a new terminal. It was demolished in 2013.