10/31/2023. Remarks by Kees Kort: "The old French postcard shows a tractor biplane on the airfield of Pont-Levoy, some 25 mls (40 km) east of Tours, France. The maker of the postcard incorrectly identified the biplane as an Appareil-école type Goupil (training device of the Goupil type). However, the early French aviation pioneer Alexandre Goupil (1843-1909) never built a biplane in this form.

A contributing factor to the incorrect designation might be that sometimes the name Goupil was erroneously attributed to Ambroise Goupy who built around 1910 a successful tractor biplane together with the Italian Mario Calderara.

The pictured biplane had some basic differences with the Goupy biplane, like the four ailerons hinging at the rear of the wings, the Goupy had the ailerons at the wingtips, and the almost lacking stagger, while the Goupy had considerable stagger.

(Kees Kort Collection)

In the upper photo a logo is rather faintly visible on the rudder, in the photo above the logo clearly shows the abbreviation AVIA, which stood for Ateliers Vosgiens d'Industrie Aéronautique (Vosges Aeronautical Industry Workshops). This company was initiated in April 1909 by the civil engineer and early aviator Charles Roux, commercial director was Émile Bonnet. Already in 1905 Charles Roux had constructed and tested a glider.

AVIA lasted only one and a half year, till the autumn of 1910, but in a feverish tempo produced no less than eight different designs, four monoplanes and four biplanes.

Morlat flying school, Pont-Levoy Aerodrome (Kees Kort Collection)

Only one example of the subject AVIA Tractor Biplane type was built, it was delivered to the Morlat flying school at Pont-Levoy."