Jan 1933: This item was posted at Wiener Neustadt with the request that it be sent on a special Glider Post flight, the date of which depended in part on the weather. It was cancelled at Wiener Neustadt at 15:00 on 10 Jan 1933, and sent by train to Südbahnhof (Wien 76). The special flight was made by Robert Kronfeld in his glider on 27.1.1933. An aircraft towing the glider took off from Aspern and flew to Gloggnitz (the start of the Semmering area) where the glider was released and it flew on, eventually landing on a snowfield in the Semmering - probably south of the Semmering rail tunnel where there is a quite extensive ski area. The towing aircraft would have returned to Aspern. After landing, the mail entered the conventional postal system for onward delivery, receiving a normal Semmering dated cancellation. This is the system now used for the Kinderdorf balloon flights.

The postal surcharge for the flight was 50 groschen for cards and 1 schilling for letters up to 10 gram. The small print suggests a surcharge of 50gro for a card, which leaves 1+1+10=12gro which in 1933 was the inland (and thus the German) rate for surface mail. Not showing well on the picture is an orange 115 under the Semmering cancel. That cannot be a pneumatic station number: it's in the wrong place and Wien 115 never was a pneumatic station. And if it *is* orange (the item was provided to the authors as a coloured photocopy) it's the only pneumatic number known in that colour! It could have been a serial number for items held for the flight.

As air mail, it was handled within Vienna by the pneumatic mail system, receiving the cancel T.A. 10 WIEN 76 R/a at 17:40 on 10 Jan 1933 and being forwarded to Telegraphenamt for transfer to the airport. It acquired a beautiful Telegraphenamt cancel on the back at 18:10 on 10 Jan 1933; this is the usual cancellation on airmail items from Wien centre to the airport at Aspern where it would have been kept until the flight. The special flight cachet was probably added at the airport - it does not have an actual date for the flight.