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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0524.PDF
Paris,-and be home again to dinner. It will take him to Bagdad in a day and half or New York m two ^ys. Many business men would smile at the idea of »sing this^mode oi conveyance to-day, but the only thing is to remind t&em that they also smiled in the early days of motor-cars, and yet haJi the business to-day would take double the time to do it the motor-car were not in existence. ' ,,=(,f,1i " Rivers suggest a very probable and certainly useful employment of aeronautics, using them as a line oi Hignt. Huge districts in many localities, such as Africa, are controlled by officials who usuaUy employ the river as a means of transit, Using motor launches, and then inland from the nearest^pmnt^ Think of replacing this by the use of seaplanes doing «» ™» an hour. This equally applies to mails. South America Canada, Asia, all come into this scheme, and^no landmg ground is required. Nature has supplied it m the ™m °x * smooth-surfaced river. Again, these ready-made roads could be followed at night with a searchlight on the macinne with the greatest ease and no danger. :„,-„!„ an "The Cape to Cairo Railway again affords simplyan instance which occurs over and over again m that and otner countries, where an aerial service might be employed as an adjunct to the railway. The present method would pr°kaf£y be one's arrival at a wayside station and then, say, 5° mUfs in a bullock wagon, or perhaps walking, over jolty roads, or no roads at all, taking one or several days. Compare this w th stepping into an aeroplane and arriving in half an nour. Certainly the development of all the Overseas Dominions will be largely affected by flying." , The author claimed that not only was the aeroplane the fastest form of transport, but it was also sate. Flying, he said, even from the first, has never been really dangerous, while to-day it has become practi- cally as safe as any other method of travel. In flying, if statistics were taken of the number of miles flown per accident, of the number of accidents at any given aerodrome per annum, and so on, it would be found that, although there was.a certain amount of risk'm the air,that risk did not amount to a danger. We are glad that he approached the subject in this way, though it would have been more convincing to the man in the street if actual statistics could have been adduced, to prove the statement. That, un- fortunately, is quite impossible now. Most of the flying done nowadays is war flying, of which the records are not available to the public. All the latter is allowed to know is that a certain number of regrettable accidents do happen. These find their way into the papers and give a natural impression that flying must be a very dangerous pursuit. As a rule, no one outside official circles has any exact knowledge of how or why these accidents have happened, and, more important still from the point of view of future popular interest, we do not know the number of miles flown per accident. We are reasonably certain that ' our Service aeroplanes fly many thousands of miles daily under the most arduous conditions possible, . and that, having regard to all the circumstances, the - proportion of genuine accidents as opposed tfc casual- ties in battle is relatively small. We entirely agree that the risks of peace flying with modern engines and machines do not at all amount to actual danger. Unfortunately, it will require time to demonstrate this fact, for fact it is. It is not one of the things that the average man in the street is likely to take • on trust just because the people who know assure him that it is so. He had to be educated up to the railway train and the motor car—a slow process in both cases. Yet these vehicles worked on a stable track with which he was perfectly familiar. When it comes to allowing himself to be carried off into the . upper air, he will require even more convincing of the safety of the means of transport offered to him. He can be convinced, and will be, but we shouldbe deluding ourselves if we imagined that the conversion MAY 31, 1917. from land and sea to aerial transport is going to be accomplished in a day. • • • With reference to the all-important The factor of the cost of aerial mail and Running Cost passenger services, the author of the Aerial paper took his audience deeply into Services, figures. He showed that, taking as an instance, a regular service between London and Paris, and allowing for nine machines in commission, each carrying twelve passengers both ways, it should be possible to make a profit of £43,000 per annum at a fare of £5 per passenger for the single journey. On the other hand, he reached the rather surprising conclusion that if the number of passengers averaged only eight per journey, at the same fares and everything else being equal, the service would result in a loss of £14,000 per annum. In arriving at his conclusions, the author based his calculations on a running cost of three shillings per mile for all charges. We should have said that such an estimate looks to be somewhat on the optimistic side, but Mr. Holt Thomas has had, we must point out, a vary considerable amount of experience in the running costs of aircraft, and we must assume, therefore, that he knows what he is talking about when he places . the figure so low. Again, in the matter oi mail and parcels services, he showed that, with four machines in active work, each carrying a useful load of 2,000 lbs. and earning %d. per ounce for letters and 2s. per 3 lb. parcel, the profit of the London^Paris service would work out at £60,000. per annum. With half-loads the profits would stand at £35,000, and with three-quarter loads at £14,000 per annum. Reading these figures one feels inclined to rush straight away to the City for the purpose of promoting aerial transport companies ! One great point, which was insisted upon in relation to aerial services, was reliability of machine and motor. In this connection Mr. Holt Thomas told his audience that, while he could not for obvious reasons say how many machines his firm had actually delivered at Farnborough, he could say that there had been a great many. Out of the whole series there had" only been four involuntary stoppages, and each one of these was due to some minor cause, such as a stoppage in a fuel pipe, or something equally trivial. As a matter of fact, there is now no reason to believe that the aero-motor is any less reliable than the motor- car engine. That means that, so far as engine troubles are concerned, the aeroplane has actually arrived at a standard of reliability quite comparable to that of the land vehicle. Structurally, too, the aeroplane is, under all ordinary circumstances, absolutely safe in the air. It may be argued that there are the records of a number of recent accidents which would indicate that this ii not so, but it must be remembered that these accidents have happened in the course of war-flying, or of training for.it, in which machines are subjected to extraordinary strains which they would never be called upon to endure in ordinary peace flying. It cannot be too clearly insisted upon, in order that the lay mind may be able to appreciate this reliability aspect, that what is called " stunt " flying is a different thing entirely to the straight- away flying demanded for commercial purposes. For war and for exhibition purposes " stunts " are permissible, often essential, but the pilot who would essay them in commercial flying would assuredly lose his job on the very first occasion. 524
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