UTA French Airlines: First DC-8 Flight from Paris to Douala, September 1960

An early jet-age connection to equatorial Africa: the French overseas airline, UTA, which was then, prior to its merger with TAI, operating as Union Aeromaritime de Transport (UAT) but even at this time had its distinctive purple color scheme, carried this envelope to the recently-independent Cameroon in September 1960, linking Paris with Douala aboard the first flight of a DC-8 "jetliner", as the thick cancellation stamp makes clear, although there is nearly as much handwriting on the paper as printed stamp, perhaps the result of collector's cataloging.