FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1930
UNTITLED0 - 0077.PDF
FLIGHT, JANUARY 3, 1930 THE HISTORY AND GROWTH OF COMMERCIAL AIR ; TRANSPORT r By CAPT. NORMAN MACMILLAN, M.C., A.F.C., A.F.R.Ae.S. Capt. Macmillan, Chief Test Pilot to the Fairey Aviation Cowiba/ny, is the distinguished author of " The Art of Flying," "Into the Blue," and " The Air Traveller's Guide to Europe." COMMERCIAL air transport consists of three mainbranches—passenger transport, mail transport, anda combination of the two. These may be further sub-divided into national and international lines, regular and occasional routes. Before the war there was no such thing as commercial air transport. Communication of this nature by air first com- menced just before the cessation of hostilities when aeroplanes were used by all the principal belligerent nations for the purpose of swiftly carrying despatches and sometimes person- ages of importance. This abnormal use of military aircraft was continued by the Allies during the negotiations which followed the signing of the Armistice. From these crude beginnings arose post-war air transportation services for passengers and mails, equipped with military aeroplanes rudely converted into aerodynamically less efficient passenger- carrying aircraft, and the hegemony of Civil Air Transport Regulations was coincident in Europe. National civil air departments were created, in some countries at a much later date than in others. In Great Britain the Directorate, of Civil Aviation was instituted in 1919, whereas in Italy the Italian counterpart was not formed until 1925. Germany laboured under severe Allied restrictions until 1923, and restrictions less severe until 1926. the first four nations in the field were Great Britain, France, Belgium, and Hol'and. In those days, when the foundations of the mercantile air futures of many nations were laid, the mortar was mixed of a compound of military, geographical and politi- cal necessities which varied nationally in its proportion of constituent parts and thus has proved to each nation to be more or less adequate for the vast increase in commercial air transport which has taken place since. This was a reversal of the process by which naval fleets grew out of the mercan- tile needs of maritime trading nations, this very inversion of commercial growth being provocative of considerable difficulties in the early years of this latest form of transport. Military requirements, political repression, post-war finances, all made it exceedingly difficult to hoist and keep flying the flag of aerial commerce. America felt the repercussions of the war also ; but in the United States the unity of language and for the first seven years the freedom from all restrictions on flying, coupled with her geographical vastness and the commercial and mileage relations of her industrial and financial centres has led her to an outlook on commercial aviation which is not altogether parallel to that obtaining in Europe. The first United States air mail route commenced operations in 1920, about a year after the inauguration of British and French routes in Europe. The extension of the United States air mail route grew to link that great country east and west by air. Night flying sections were prepared for mail carrying, while passengers using the air route by day and the rail route by night were transported swiftly across the continent. The Government operated mail service run by the Post Office was eventually taken over and run commercially. Feeder lines sprang up connecting towns on either side of the main air line with the transcontinental service. In 1926 the United States instituted regulations affecting public aviation which bear a close resem- blance to those pertaining throughout Europe. The greatest expansion in air transportation has taken place generally throughout the world since 1926. Air lines have been flung from Europe to South America interconnected across the South Atlantic by steamship, from the United States to South America, from England to India, from Moscow to the far East. Every major country in the world is casting its eyes upon the development of long distance air routes, and this very problem is one which will inevitably raise the question of greater reciprocal rights or lead to the commercial barrier of exclusion. No country in the world is today mistress of the air." In all probability, no country in the world will ever be able to occupy that position, because freedom of the seas " and " freedom of the air "are two entirely different kinds of freedom. Flying over foreign soil is to the aircraft the equivalent of a vessel sailing within the three-mile limit, but without the ability to get outside that three-mile limit very rapidly as the ship can do. The age of great Imperialistic policies is for ever swept away by the cancer which overtook Imperialism in 1914, and which has continued ever since. Small states may contmue to uphold despotism but their policies do not affect the larger nations unless the latter choose deliberately that they should. Thus, in the society of aviation which is continually growing in numbers and in strength, and in which the development of the civil effort is fast outstripping the military, there is evolving a position which, in the near future, may occasion greater unity among the nations of the world. Allow me to digress for a moment. There are many people who think quite honestly that we should not fraternise with Germans because of the war, people who really believe that German war heroes are ipso facto British villains, people who have persuaded themselves that French and British (primarily) warriors fall into an entirely different category to Teutonic warriors. I sympathise with these people. I understand their feelings, but I do not feel the same myself, probably in part because I remember my experience with a German prisoner of war, new-captured in 1916, who was absolutely international in his human side. Language and uniform alone made him German as distinguished from Frenchman or Britisher; the common denominator of war found him otherwise denationalised. My other reason for thinking this is that I have been engaged continuously on the flying side of aviation since 1916 and aviation—particularly non-military aviation—is a wonderful temperer of racial feelings. Through aviation men of antagonistic descent can evince a brotherhood which is above geographical frontier and barrier of tongue. This development can be one of the most important by- products of civil aviation for the whole world. But we shall stand in grave danger of losing nationally this which our aviation cliques in each country already possess, if the political authorities of each country do not seize upon international civil aviation as one sure steppng-stone to cross the confluence of the waters of international mistrust and national self- interest. I look upon our own Director of Civil Aviation as an apostle of the new faith, one who, through his appointment and his personality, possesses friends in every country, one who works for aviation unceasingly, one who realises as no one better could that the comity of nations cannot be jeopar- dised but can only prosper if greater freedom is permitted for the commercial argonauts of the air to pass throughout the territories of the world. The passage of all civil aircraft without let or hindrance would be a great step forward in the political development of flight. At the present moment the barriers to this freedom are mostly those of military and naval restrictions. In nearly every country of the world there are prohibited areas over which aircraft must not fly. Why ? Because these areas hide the great secrets, the built- up bases of a country's war forces. The airman cannot fly straight into Greece from Serbia, cannot fly direct from Vienna to Budapest, cannot fly in a. straight line from Sofia to Constantinople. To come nearer home, he must not fly over Portsmouth, Devonport, Chatham, Rosyth, and several other places in Great Britain, at a less height than 6,000 ft. It is only by chance that the prohibited areas in this country are of no hindrance to the commercial aircraft of the country because our one air route to the coast does not approach them. France has prohibited areas, too, and so has every country of importance, while the unimportant ones follow suit. Again, why ? Because we still think internationally in terms of war, like the individual people who think that the Germans are not really human. We cling to our old established ideas of armaments, and secrecy about those armaments. The greatest development which lies before civil aviation is the development of peace. In the realm of international advertising the commercial aeroplanes of a nation may well become greater emissaries than the ships of her mercantile marine, for while the latter are forced to stop at the coastal or river fringes of a foreign country the former can penetrate to the uttermost parts of the earth bearing the credentials of their country among the nations of the world wherever they fly. And everything which tends towards the inter- course of peoples must lead to the elimination of war. There was a time when the intermarriage of princes and princesses was the diplomatic way to peace and alliance, for the mistrust and suspicion which invariably flourish at 77
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
