Europe Airpost

Europe Airpost is one of those names spotters know from old logbooks with a smile: a Boeing 737 with a French registration that flew vacationers to the Mediterranean by day and letters across France by night. Behind the brand stands the mail airline of La Poste – first as Aéropostale, then as Europe Airpost and today as ASL Airlines France. This page puts the history in context and shows you how to recognize the aircraft in photos and in the field.

Europe Airpost at a glance

Europe Airpost was the airline of the French postal service. Its core was a business model that is rarely seen: the same aircraft worked around the clock in two roles. By night they flew mail and parcels between Paris and the French regions, by day they were converted into passenger aircraft and flew vacationers on behalf of tour operators.

The base was at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, with company headquarters in Tremblay-en-France right at the airport. The fleet flew almost exclusively the Boeing 737 – in quick-change versions, as a pure freighter and as a passenger jet.

Important for context: Europe Airpost is not a vanished airline but a closed chapter of a company that still flies today. Since June 2015 it has been called ASL Airlines France and belongs to the Irish ASL group.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code 5O: appeared in the flight numbers of scheduled and charter flights.
• ICAO code FPO: in the air traffic control flight plan and today on flight trackers.
• Callsign FRENCH POST: how the crews identified themselves on the radio – a direct hint of the mail origins.

The special thing: when ASL took over the airline, the codes and callsign were kept. If you hear “FRENCH POST” in Paris radio traffic today, that is ASL Airlines France – so the name on the radio is a piece of living Europe Airpost history.

From Aéropostale to Europe Airpost

The name Aéropostale rings a bell in France. It recalls the Compagnie générale aéropostale of the 1920s, which made aviation history with mail flights between Europe, Africa and South America and later merged into Air France. The name lived on afterward as an Air France subsidiary without aircraft of its own. The airline on this page deliberately picked up that name, but as a flight operation it is a new foundation of the 1990s.

The actual line begins in the 1980s. In the Air Inter orbit, Intercargo Service (ICS) was created in 1986 for night freight and mail. According to French reference works, the first mail flight went from Orly to Montpellier in February 1987. Among others, the Vickers Vanguard was used at the time – a four-engine turboprop that was already considered a classic by then – and, after an accident in 1988, a Lockheed Hercules as a replacement.

In March 1991 La Poste, Air Inter, Air France and the regional airline TAT jointly founded the Société d’exploitation aéropostale, Aéropostale for short. TAT left in 1995, after which Air France and La Poste shared the company in equal parts. In the late 1990s Airbus A300s and ATR 72s were added as freighters alongside the Boeing 737.

Around the turn of the millennium Air France and La Poste dissolved their joint structure. Air France took over the Airbus freighters and some 737s, La Poste the larger part of the 737 fleet and the ground operations. The postal service continued the flying activity alone under the new name Europe Airpost. English-language sources give December 1, 2000, as the date of the renaming, French ones the year 2001.

The business model: mail by night, vacationers by day

Mail has to fly at night. Letters handed in in the evening must be in delivery the next morning – that takes a dense network of night flights between Paris and the regions. By day the aircraft would then sit on the ground. This is exactly where the Aéropostale and Europe Airpost model came in: in the morning the aircraft became passenger aircraft and flew for tour operators.

On the freight side Europe Airpost flew not only for La Poste but also for parcel services such as Chronopost and other express customers, in Europe including for DHL. On the passenger side the focus was charter flights for French tour operators – to southern Europe, the Mediterranean islands and North Africa.

Over the course of the 2000s further pillars were added. In 2004 and 2005 the airline briefly worked with Flywest on scheduled routes from Brest and Toulon, but then concentrated on charter and cargo again. According to French sources, Europe Airpost carried around 750,000 passengers and about 63,000 tons of freight in 2009.

The fleet: Boeing 737 in every role

The Boeing 737 was the backbone of Europe Airpost. At the time of the sale to ASL the fleet numbered around 17 aircraft according to French sources. French reference works describe the fleet toward the end of the 2000s like this:

Type	Role	Spotter note
Boeing 737-300 QC	Passengers by day, mail by night	Large cargo door at front left, otherwise like a normal 737-300
Boeing 737-300 freighter	Pure cargo	No cabin windows, cargo door at front left
Boeing 737-400 freighter	Mail and express freight	Longer fuselage than the -300, also without windows
Boeing 737-700	Passenger charter	Next Generation with larger CFM56-7 engines
Boeing 737-800	Passenger charter	Longest 737 version in the fleet

The exact numbers differ by source and cutoff date. What is certain: with the 737-700 and 737-800 the Next Generation arrived at Europe Airpost and gradually replaced the older Classic models in passenger service. How to tell the 737 generations apart is shown in the guide Telling Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart. The manufacturer of all types is Boeing.

Quick change: how the dual use works

The quick-change 737 is the key to understanding Europe Airpost. Externally it differs from a passenger 737 mainly by a large cargo door on the left side of the fuselage behind the cockpit. Inside, it is prepared so that the rows of seats are mounted on pallets. Instead of removing every seat individually, the ground crew rolls whole blocks of seats out through the cargo door and freight pallets in.

For spotters this means: in a daytime photo you see a perfectly normal charter jet with cabin windows. Only the outline of the large door gives away that this aircraft had a completely different job at night. More on the features of freighters and combi aircraft is in the guide Recognizing cargo aircraft.

How to recognize Europe Airpost

The most important features on old photos:

1. The type: At Europe Airpost practically everything was a Boeing 737. Airbus freighters in mail service belong to the Aéropostale era, turboprops like the ATR 72 mainly to the time around the turn of the millennium.
2. The registration: French, so starting with F-. The guide Understanding aircraft registrations explains the basics of the system.
3. The titles: “Europe Airpost” on the fuselage. Photos from the 2000s show both aircraft with a white base livery and variants with a lot of yellow – the look changed over the years.
4. The door: A large cargo door at front left points to a QC or freighter version.

After the sale to ASL the aircraft initially kept flying in the previous livery and with the old callsign. Photos from the years between 2008 and 2015 therefore often still show the Europe Airpost titles, even though the airline had long belonged to the ASL group. Only with the renaming in 2015 did the uniform ASL look arrive.

The ASL years: sale and renaming

Around the turn of 2007/2008 La Poste parted with its airline – French sources say the end of 2007, English-language ones completion in March 2008. The buyer was the Irish ASL Aviation Group, which then included Air Contractors of Dublin – today ASL Airlines Ireland. La Poste kept a small stake of 3 percent. A sale to South Africa’s Imperial Holdings announced in early 2007 had previously fallen through.

Under ASL, Europe Airpost expanded the passenger business. At the end of 2013 the airline announced new scheduled routes, including between Brest, Rennes and Grenoble. In June 2015 came the step that ended the Europe Airpost brand: the ASL group unified the names of its airlines, and Europe Airpost became ASL Airlines France. In 2016 the former TNT Airways of Liège joined the group as ASL Airlines Belgium.

Today ASL Airlines France flies cargo, ACMI assignments and passenger flights, including scheduled routes to Algeria and, in summer, to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. The fleet still consists of Boeing 737s, now with many converted 737-800BCF freighters. You find the details on the current fleet on the page for ASL Airlines France.

Europe Airpost in French air traffic

Europe Airpost operated in a market that changed greatly in the 1990s and 2000s. Air Inter merged into Air France in 1997, and many independent charter and scheduled airlines such as AOM or Air Liberté disappeared. Europe Airpost survived this phase because it had a stable base contract with the postal service and could use its aircraft twice.

In charter it faced competition from Transavia France, the low-cost subsidiary of the Air France-KLM group, and from other leisure airlines such as XL Airways France. In cargo it stood alongside the big express integrators like DHL, FedEx and UPS, for which it partly flew itself.

Spotting the successor today

You no longer see Europe Airpost itself, but you do see its successor. The best place is the home base, Paris Charles de Gaulle. Where to find good positions there is shown in the guide Plane spotting at Paris Charles de Gaulle. With passenger flights to Algeria, ASL Airlines France is also active at French regional airports, such as Lyon or Lille – check the current schedule beforehand, because routes and seasonal times change.

Cargo flights are often in the evening and night hours. If you want to photograph them, you need patience and the right technique – the guide Photographing aircraft at night has tips. And before you unpack your camera in France, it is worth looking at the rules: what applies at French airports is explained in the article Photography at French airports.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Aéropostale with the pioneering company of the 1920s – the 1991 mail airline carried the name as a legacy but is a foundation of its own.
• Taking Europe Airpost for a bankrupt airline – the company has kept flying as ASL Airlines France since 2015.
• Confusing Aéropostale with Aeropostal – the Venezuelan airline has a similar name but nothing to do with La Poste.
• Taking every 737 with a cargo door for a freighter – with cabin windows it is a quick-change version.
• Automatically dating photos with the Europe Airpost titles before 2008 – under ASL the aircraft also kept flying in the old look for years.

Conclusion

Europe Airpost stands for a special chapter in French air traffic: a mail airline that used its Boeing 737s around the clock – by night for letters, by day for vacationers. Aéropostale became Europe Airpost, and Europe Airpost became ASL Airlines France. For you as a spotter this means: old photos belong to an airline that still exists under another name, and you still hear the callsign “FRENCH POST” on the radio over Paris today.