Northwest First Flight Boston Massachusetts AMF - Amsterdam Netherlands 1979

Description

In June 1979, the Civil Aeronautics Board authorized Northwest Airlines to add Manchester, United
Kingdom and Amsterdam to its transatlantic all-cargo service, then being operated as a New York-Boston-
Glasgow service. On September 11, 1979, the route was extended from Glasgow to Amsterdam, returning
to New York via Manchester without retracing any of the outbound legs. Northwest requested philatelic
service and furnished a map-type cachet showing the route and a Boeing 747 Freighter. The U.S. Postal Service announcement, however, made no reference to the fact that this was to be a cargo flight.
This cover was
carried on the September 11, 1979 inaugural Northwest Airlines flight from the
Logan Airport Mail Facility in Boston, Massachusetts
to Amsterdam, Netherlands (where it was backastamped) and is listed in the The American Air Mail Catalogue as NW-F18fb.
On April 15, 2008, Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines announced a merger agreement. The merger of the two carriers formed what was then the largest commercial airline in the world, with 786 aircraft. Delta Air Lines' brand survived, while Northwest's brand officially ended in 2009.