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Aviation History
1933
1933 - 0790.PDF
FLIGHT, OCTOBER 19, 1933 come self-supporting, and we are ready to believe that they know their own business and are the best judges as to how this object is to be reached. Given different terms, Imperial Airways are ready to run separate mail services, and doubtless they would run them very well. It is, wa believe, the idea that when the Boulton & Paul mail-plane has passed all its tests it is to be handed over to Imperial Air ways under a special arrangement for trial runs across the Empire. It may be noted that the K.L.M., who have a particularly happy agreement with the Holland Post Office, are in favour of com bined services. Plenty of other air transport authorities take the other view. In the contract terms recently published by the Australian Govern ment for the service between Singapore and Australia, mails are definitely to take precedence of passengers. The Tata Air Line in India will look at nothing but mails for the present. Most of the air services in Canada, we believe, regard mails as the most important traffic. The French Aeropostale service to South America is only for mails. Without any doubt we British want to get our mails to and from India, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa as fast as an aeroplane can fly. Passengers do not want to travel so fast. They are content to beat the steamship by a week or a fortnight. In fact the passengers' view is comparative; the needs of the mails are superlative. Night flying is a problem by itself, and a very complex one. There is one useful route in the Prairie Provinces of Canada which has been lit for night flying, and has operated for a time with suc cess. How can Europe be lit for night flying? Internationalism seems the only way, but the heavens forfend that we should advocate the calling together of an aeronautical Geneva! In time each nation will light up its own airways, and in still more time the whole system will become satisfactory. Once our aircraft have shaken the air of Europe off their wings it ought to be possible for us to arrange for night flying over British lands, wherever it is desirable and not impossible. Lord Londonderry, in his reply, pointed out that there were several parts of the Empire routes where night flying is as yet hardly practicable. Of course, the Air Minister had to say something, for he could not refer the Chamber to the Post Office, and he could hardly say that he thought the Post Office ought to do all that the Chamber asked. So he took refuge in stating facts of common knowledge. He also added (and this, of course, told us a lot that we did not know before) that the question of improving air-mail ser vices was largely a matter of finance. As the Bell man, in the Hunting of the Shark, said: " It's a maxim tremendous but trite." We feel sure that Lord Londonderry sympathised with the objects of the Chamber, but as a Cabinet Minister, and also with the Assistant Postmaster-General at his elbow, he could hardly open his heart to them. What he can do is to urge the setting up of the tribunal asked for by the Chamber, so that the Cabinet may see the reasons for deciding that air mails must be improved and tha^ they must not be held up while the Air Ministry and the Post Office keep passing the ball to and fro whenever a tackle seems immi'- nent. The referee's whistle is urgently needed, and the Secretary of State for Air seems the person to ask the Cabinet to blow it. Reduction of charges was the other point raised by the London Chamber of Commerce. Sir Geoffrey Clarke asked for a flat rate for the Empire and a cheap one, suggesting 4d. for the first unit and 2d. for each additional unit. He made a very good point when he said that every request for a reduc tion was met by almost exactly the same arguments as were put forward by the Post Office in 1840 when Rowland Hill proposed the introduction of the penny post. We can add little to that plea. The Post Office makes a profit of 10 million pounds a year, but from that magnificent sum should be deducted a proportion of what the Air Ministry pays in air mail subsidies, as that comes out of the public funds. If the Government would decide to stop the subsidy and at the same time would order the Post Office to spend money on improving the air-mail service, they would almost certainly confer a great benefit on British commerce. There also remains the possi bility that a cheap air-mail rate might surprise the Post Office by paying as well as the penny post used to pay in the happy pre-war years. Some point is lent to the above remarks about speed by the latest fast flight from England to Australia by Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, which was a very fine flight indeed. What impresses us forcibly is the frequency with which A Concrete Iast flights are made nowadays be- xamp e tween different parts of the Empire by solo pilots in small aeroplanes. These flights demon strate how stoutly engines and machines will stand up to such incessant work, and they also show how tough and enduring are certain pilots. They also demonstrate the possibility of carrying mails at a speed which is really worth while, and they remind the general public of the advantages of long-distance air operation. Of course, as we admitted above, passengers can not be hurried along at such a pace. They must certainly be given opportunity to sleep in comfort. What these flights show is the difference which be comes possible when no passengers are carried. At the same time these flights are hampered by keeping to one pilot and one machine all through, and by the absence of night-lighting along the route. If, with these drawbacks, an aeroplane can get to Australia in just over seven days, it would certainly be possible to get mails there very much faster with a proper organisation and with such facilities as the London Chamber of Commerce suggested. In a properly organised air mail service, which we shall certainly have in the future, there will be changes of machine as well as of pilot, while certain stages will be flown regularly by night. Each pilot will work regularly to and fro over a certain stretch until he knows it as thoroughly as the Croydon pilots know the way to Paris and Cologne. The man bags will be transferred from the incoming to the outgoing machine with great speed, and the whole operation will take very few minutes. When that happy time comes, the week just taken by Kings- ford Smith in reaching Wyndham will seem slow. What the ultimate speed will be, we should not care to prophesy. Probably there will be no such thing as " ultimate " speed.
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