Saint-Exupéry and the Aéropostale: From Toulouse to the Desert

On 25 December 1918 a plane flew from Toulouse to Barcelona, the opening flight of Pierre-Georges Latécoère's dream: an air line from France to Senegal through Spain and Morocco. The company was based at Montaudran aerodrome, and Saint-Exupéry later flew its mail between Toulouse and Dakar. Today the Piste des Géants covers much of the old take-off strip, the Jardins de la Ligne evoke the countries the pilots crossed, and the museum L'Envol des pionniers has kept the story alive since 2018.

Visitor guidance: The Piste des Géants and the Jardins de la Ligne are public; the L'Envol des pionniers museum stands on the old aerodrome site.

Cape Juby was a refuelling and stopover station for the mail planes. Saint-Exupéry became its station manager in 1927 and stayed 18 months. When rebellious tribes held downed pilots, he negotiated their release, an episode he wrote into his first novel, Southern Mail, which follows the Casablanca-Dakar mail route. A museum honouring Aéropostale, Saint-Exupéry and its pilots opened in Tarfaya in 2004.

Location precision: The pin marks the town of Tarfaya, beside the former Cape Juby airfield; the exact runway position is not marked.

Visitor guidance: Visit the museum in Tarfaya honouring Aéropostale and Saint-Exupéry.

In 1929 Saint-Exupéry was appointed director of Aeroposta Argentina, and he lived in Buenos Aires, in the Galería Güemes, an art nouveau arcade on Florida Street built in 1913. In his room there he wrote Night Flight, whose hero Rivière was based on the operations director Didier Daurat. The novel's pilot Fabien flies the Patagonia run into a cyclone. Night Flight won the prix Femina.

Visitor guidance: The arcade is a shopping gallery on Florida Street.

At 2.45am on 30 December 1935, Saint-Exupéry and his co-pilot André Prévot crashed their Caudron Simoun in the desert while chasing a Paris-Saigon speed record. They nearly died of thirst before, on the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel found them. He told the ordeal in Wind, Sand and Stars, and it fed The Little Prince, whose narrator crashes in the Sahara and meets the prince. The area around Wadi Natrun is identified as the likely site.

Location precision: The exact crash site is unknown; Wadi Natrun, in Egypt, is the likely area and the pin marks the valley.

On 31 July 1944 Saint-Exupéry took off from Corsica on a reconnaissance mission in an unarmed Lockheed Lightning and never came back. In 1998 a fisherman east of Riou Island found his silver identity bracelet; in May 2000 a diver found Lightning debris off Marseille. Officials confirmed in 2004 that the wreckage was his plane.

Location precision: The wreckage lay off Marseille, east of Riou Island; the pin marks the island, not the seabed.