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Aviation History
1936
1936 - 1536.PDF
JUNE II, 1936. FLIGHT. 627 COMMERCIAL J\/IATION AIRLINES AIRPORTS- TOURING CENTRE : Berna aerodrome taken from the air, with the Bernese Alps in the background ; the highest point is the Jungfrau. THE WEEK AT CROYDON Operators and the Strikes : " Hanno's" Adventures Ice Formation EARLY last week the situation in Paris caused some alarm. Imperial Airways had only six days' petrol at Le Bourget, and it was planned to fly with full tanks from Croydon. When returning to England, arrangements had been made for refuelling, if necessary, at Lympne. British Continental Airways on their Lille service had something of the same problem—to which was added that uneasiness about what might happen in the immediate vicinity of a big manufacturing centre. Photo graphs in the newspapers showing Paris taxi-cabs stand ing idle with radiator placards remarking "Plus d'essence," made one wonder what would happen to freight and pas senger transport. It is a long walk to Le Bourget. Up to now the adventures of Capt. Rogers in Lybia, when on a delivery flight to Cairo with Hanno, have not been mentioned, but since the Geneva correspondents of newspapers have now sent the story to their London papers, there is no further need for secrecy. Capt. Rogers had permission to fly over Lybia, and his papers were in order. He is too old a bird to disobey any local regula tion, yet, when he landed at some Lybian aerodrome, he was treated like a prisoner, threatened with personal searching, and put under an armed guard of black troops with fixed bayonets. Probably it is best merely to say that this is hardly the friendly treatment received by captains of British airliners from most other nations. The sort of flying weather we have had lately has not been bad in itself, but it is curious to find ice formation at 5,000 ft. in June, as a pilot on the London-Basle route did the other day. Ice, however, is not the bogy it is made out to be, and when cloud is not actually on the ground the pilot merely drops down to a warmer layer of air and melts the stuff away. Swissair is, I think, the only company which issues regular '' ice-formation charts" to pilots. Roughly, these are contour maps of the country to be flown over, on which the contours of the clouds are also marked. At certain heights the probability of ice formation is shown, and I am told that these charts are accurate to within a mile or so. I am told that the other day, at an almost exactly predeter mined height, ice formation began. The first passenger from England right through to Hong Kong left last week by Imperial Airways. He is a Chinese merchant who probably takes the whole affair in the philosophic vein of his countryman who, when shown an aeroplane in flight for the first time and asked to admire the proceeding, saw nothing remarkable in it, because to fly was the very purpose for which the mechanism had been invented and made. Like everybody else I went to Gatwick on Saturday. The buildings, gangways and subways are admirable, and the whole place has obviously been designed for the job. I don't think Croydon was, and probably those respon sible were under the impression that it was to be a Bat- tersea lost dogs' home or a large model of some well-known rabbit warren, wherein the ferrets could never find the rabbits. People, as Flight has already pointed out, seem to miss the main idea of Gatwick. As far as Croydon is concerned it is most useful to have another emergency airport, properly equipped and with full facilities. There is already Gravesend, and, thanks to the enterprise of Airports, Ltd., who own both, there is now Gatwick, also. At Lille last week there was a ceremony concerned with the airport extension, at which Capt. Stead, of B.C.A., was presented with a medal by M. Thiriel, President ol the Lille Chamber of Commerce. It commemorated the first British line to operate a London-Lille service. A. VIATOR.
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