This Costa Rica COVID-19 emergency flight cover is the first emergency cover related to a disease in our philatelic history.
Costa Rica COVID-19 emergency flight cover. COVID-19 caught most of the world by surprise, that’s a fact. I could be because some were not interested in international news or just because they thought it was going to be affecting Asia. SURPRISE! It spread faster than most people thought it would. Also, it hit stronger in some first world countries.
This rapid spread made a lot of countries shut their borders and therefore leaving tourists trapped. Because of this, many countries started to send COVID-19 emergency or humanitarian flights to bring citizens back.
This is the case of Israel that sent a humanitarian flight to Costa Rica. The flight was operated By EL AL, arrived and departed on March 26th from San Jose to Tel Aviv.
Knowing this, a smart philatelist made a commemorative cover, in fact, 22 in total to be exact.
The cover has a cachet of a Coronavirus cell with information about the flight.
Also, the cover has 890 colones of franking (5 colones more than the rate to Israel) canceled by an official Correos de Costa Rica cancel.
The covers were flown in a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner and lasted 13 hours and 45 minutes to get to Israel with the 107 passengers that paid $1,595 for a one-way trip to return home.
Another interesting fact about this Costa Rica COVID-19 emergency flight cover is that at the same time it’s a first flight cover between Costa Rica and Israel.
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