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Aviation History
1919
1919 - 0004.PDF
by leasing sheds to private operational companies and merely charging a fee for landing. In this way, while the State would not suffer, private enterprise would be relieved of an exceedingly heavy capital charge. The State, Lord^Weir suggests, should undertake the training of all pilots to^be employed on public transport services, whether such services are in the hands of the department itself or in private hands. Such a course would, it is believed, secure] public confidence in the efficiency of the pilots, and would provide a reserve of pilots for the Royal Air Force in times of emergency. Further, the new depart ment should undertake the mapping out and the marking of aerial routes, the lighting of them by day and by night, and the inspection and certification of all private aircraft. Above all, it should attend to the special meteorological developments. Finally, it should be ready itself to undertake the'carriage of mails, goods and passengers wherever private enterprise may be found lacking. There is one point in this part of the programme that we do not like at all, and that is the reference to the State training of pilots. Does that mean the closing down of the civilian flying schools from which we drew our pilots at the beginning of the War, and to whom we owe a deep debt of gratitude on that count alone ? If it does mean that, and it can mean no less, then we say the proposal is an eminently unfair one and should be fought tooth and nail by all who are interested. It is not as though there were any real case to be made out for the State training of all pilots. We are not aware that the standard of efficiency has ever been greater in the case of the pilot trained in the Service than in that of the one who has been privately taught, until the War had been in progress long enough for the services to be able to organise a complete system of training and the civilian schools were closed down. By all means let us have a system of State licensing of pilots to be employed in flying public service aircraft. In fact, we agree that it is highly necessary that nothing should be neglected to secure the safety of those who use the air and of those over whom the aircraft of the future will fly, but we are totally unable to see wherein the public safety is likely to be made greater by the mere training of pilots by the State. There is simply nothing at all in the argument that the public will have more confidence in the State trained pilot. All the public wants to reassure it is the certainty that pilots are properly trained for their work. As to where they are taught and by whom the public does not care two straws. It is unfor tunate that the official view seems to be to the contrary. At once we have a State monopoly of training, and it gives one to think that, having secured a monopoly in one direction, there is always a danger of extension. In our view, it will not do at all. The civilian schools have dene excellent wcik in He past, and are fully capable of turning out good pilots in the future. Moreover, what is to become of the many fine pilots who have served us well during the War and who have planned to make the teaching of flying their profession afterwards ? The State cannot find employment for all of them, and furthermore there are many who do not care about the State as an employer. Is the sole avenue of livelihood to be closed to these men just because someone in authority wints to keep the training of pilots as a closed preserve ? We trust not, and we look to those who have made the aerial interest in Parliament their own to see that this most objectionable proposal is not allowed to pass the scrutiny of the two Houses. The scheme, said Lord Weir, would cost a lot of money according to the pre-War standard, but a very little according to the standards of war. How ever much it cost, it would not be-expensive, for it would serve two ends, of which the value is beyond money. First, it would provide the country with a new and tremendous industry which in a supreme degree would constitute and maintain the arterial system of the great civilisation of the future. Secondly, it would do honour to, consummate, and justify the magnificent work begun by those who are dead and whom we mourn. There is nothing that rings truer in the whole speech than this tribute to the dead. What we owe to their unselfish self-sacrifice we even yet do not know, nor can we adequately appraise the enormous advance we have made in aerial science as a result of it all. We have heard it said, with a strange lack of the true sense of proportion, that aviation has advanced by ten years in the past four. No-one should dare to appraise the progress in terms of time. Even if we say that we have made the progress of a century of peace during the War, it is probably to fall far short of the actuality—it is utterly impossible to even visualise the sum of the advance, and we shall do well simply to keep before us the appreciation that all the vast progress that has been made, all the achievement that stands to the credit of the men who have flown and who have built our warlike aircraft, has been paid for in blood and tears. The price of the admiralty of the air has been a bitter one, but it has been paid, and those who have paid it have left us a priceless legacy which we must see to it is not abused. Judged along its main lines, there is not a great deal of exception to be taken to the draft scheme as set forth by the Air Minister save in the one direc tion we have indicated. It is a sane, sound and states manlike scheme as far as it goes. That it does not go beyond the bare outline of suggestion cannot be helped. The whole question is so enormous and so fraught with possibilities that it is quite impossible for any one man—or even number of men—to set down in detail now and at once even a tithe of the facts and factors that must enter into our calcula tions in the settlement of the future of aerial develop ment. We can do nothing in the meantime but watch how it is proposed to translate the Air Min ister's theories—for at the moment they are nothing but theories—into actual living facts. In thus setting down his ideas of the future, which we may be sure are shared with his co-adjutors in the Air Ministry, Lord Weir has certainly done a great deal to clarify the future. If he had done nothing else, he has at least given us the outline of a working basis of future progress and development. Incomplete and sketchy it has to be. The War is too recent and the future too full of uncertainty for it to be otherwise, and, as we have said, it is excellent so far as the limitations of the times allow it to go. •»••«•• In a recent issue of the Daily Mail One Method there appeared an article by an aero- c of nautical correspondent, entitled " The a°M?stake Brotherhood of the Air." Generally speaking, it was an admirable enough article, but in one part of it the writer made an assertion which we thought and still think required •
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