Elias AJE Air Express

The Elias AJE Air Express was a prototype mailplane built in the United States around 1927 by G. Elias and Brother. The design was intended to be adaptable to a number of other roles, but failed to attract any orders and did not progress beyond its single prototype.

Design

The AJE Air Express was a development of the company's Elias M-1 Mailplane, with which it was marketed side-by-side in 1926. It was a single-bay, equal-span, unstaggered biplane of conventional configuration. Its fuselage incorporated a duralumin-lined mail compartment and an open cockpit for the pilot. The tail was of conventional design, and it was equipped with fixed, tailskid undercarriage. Power was supplied by a piston engine in the nose driving a tractor propeller. The ends of the wings were braced with N-struts, and in place of bracing wire, interplane bracing was achieved with steel tube.
The fuselage and tail were built from welded steel tube, and the wings from wood. The whole aircraft was covered in fabric.
From the outset, Elias hoped that the mail compartment could also be fitted with cameras for aerial survey work, or be used as a chemical hopper for crop-dusting. Despite this forward thinking, the aircraft failed to find a market.