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Aviation History
1934
1934 - 1270.PDF
1274 FLIGHT. NOVEMBER 29, 1934. THE EMPIRE ROUTES Some Important Points from Lord Londonderry's Speech in the House of Lords •: Building a Firm Foundation for Future Developments : A Reply to the Critics SOME extremely interesting and important statementswere made in the House of Lords on Wednesdayof last week by Lord Londonderry, Secretary of State for Air. They arose from questions regarding Empire air services, put to him by Lord Moyne. Lord Londonderry opened his speech with a condemna- tion of the ill-informed lay-Press criticism of Britain's Mel- bourne Race success, and then proceeded to deal with the first of Lord Moyne's questions—whether he, Lord London- derry, was aware that a foreign line offered a faster ser- vice to the Far East than that provided by Imperial Air- ways. Lord Londonderry said he was aware that it had been publicly stated that K.L.M. operated a five-day service to Batavia, but the statement was wholly incorrect, and, in fact, the schedule for this service was eight days in summer and nine days in winter, as compared with an eight-and-a-half day schedule all the year round by Imperial Airways to Singapore. It was doubtless true that as the foreign line concerned was re-equipped with new aircraft it would curtail its present schedules. Imperial Air- ways intended to do the same as they replaced their present fleet. Lord Moyne's next questions were whether, in the present subsidy arrangements, any condition existed as to speed of service; whether any extension of the subsidy period was contemplated ; and whether, in case of such extension, the Government would consider imposing such conditions. The answer, said Lord Londonderry, was that the present agreements with Imperial Airways for their Indian and African services did require that, to count for subsidy, flights should be completed within a certain period of time. But as these agreements were concluded several years ago the periods of time allowed had in the natural course been greatly improved upon by Imperial Airways in actual prac- tice. If and when any new agreements were concluded with the Company—the first would not expire until 1937— appropriate minimum conditions would certainly be in- sisted upon. They would not, however, necessarily take the form of a requirement of so many miles per hour, but of the time taken to convey passengers, mails and goods from one point to another. Demand for Comfort This issue of speed was first raised with him several months ago in the light of the performance of the fast new machines which Air France had brought into service on their cross-Channel services. Yet during the four months from July to October Imperial Airways carried three times as many passengers as Air France in the two directions between London and Paris. This fact suggested that speed, beyond a certain point, was by no means the only thing looked for by would-be travellers by air. They looked also for safety, for comfort and for regularity. He suggested that our commercial air transport system must cater for the average rather than for the exceptional passen- ger. On long-distance routes, as schedules were speeded up, and more and more of the twenty-four hours was spent in actual flight, the average passenger would demand an increasing degree of comfort. " When we are carrying three times the number of passengers on a route on which we are in direct competi- tion with a powerful rival," said Lord Londonderry, " whilst we must avoid any undue degree of complacency, we certainly need not allow ourselves to be rushed into extravagant panic measures in the blind pursuit of mere speed. That is not, of course, to say that we must not take advantage of each fresh technical development and insist, when existing fleets are re-equipped, on a substantial increase in speed. Just because the re-equipment policy of other companies falls at a different period from our own, we should not immediately write-off our existing air- craft. That would be a policy which could only end in bankruptcy and disaster.' Lord Londonderry pointed out that nearly 91,000 passengers travelled by air between England and the Conti- nent in 1933, and of these 53,500 were carried by British aircraft as compared with 37,500 by all foreign lines in combination—including French, German, Dutch and Bel- gian. Transferring the basis of comparison to the world operations of British and French air transport, what did they find ? During the year 1933 Imperial Airways carried a larger mail, a larger passenger and a larger total ton-mileage than the French ; and, whereas Air France showed a loss at the yearly rate of ,£1,300,000, excluding subsidy, the corresponding figure for Imperial Airways was less than ^450,000. Last year the ton-mileage carried by Imperial Airways was nearly 90 per cent, greater than that carried by the Dutch, and more than 100 per cent, greater than that carried by the Italians. Lastly, during the first five months of this financial year Imperial Airways ton- mileage showed an increase of a third on the corresponding figure for 1933. : American Conditions Turning to America, there was widespread misunder- standing of the course of events over there. Geography gave the United States a unique field for the development of internal air transport—and the conditions which had governed this development were quite unlike anything else in the world. Our Imperial air services—though they had different potentialities which were just as far-reaching— could never operate under such favourable conditions. The service to Australia would traverse eight foreign countries, and "Britain obviously could not dictate to those countries what their ground organisation should be. [This is a point to which Flight has more than once drawn attention.— ED.] Again, petrol, the largest single item in air transport costs, was obtainable at about 7d. a gallon in the United States as compared with something like 2s. 6d. in the case of Imperial services as a whole. Nor must the enormous sums which have been spent on the development of civil aviation in the United States be overlooked. In 1933 the net loss to the United States Post Office (in other words, the direct subsidy) was in the neigh- bourhood of ^4,750,000. The American Government's expenditure on the development of civil aviation, in the seven years from 1927 to 1933 inclusive, reached the stagger- ing total of ^25,000,000. The American technical achieve- ment in this field had indeed been striking, but seemed to have been dearly bought. A number of machines of out- standing performance were used in America, and over one or two routes there were express services with very fast sche- dules. Erroneous as had been many of the schedule figures quoted, the American air transport industry had been artificially stimulated by a vast expenditure of public money—and by a long series of boom flotations through the medium of which the small investor, to his great detri- ment, poured millions of dollars into the manufacturing industry—with the result that some remarkable aircraft could be used, though under conditions wholly different from those governing our Imperial air services. But what was the economic condition of air transport
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