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Aviation History
1938
1938 - 0982.PDF
350 FLIGHT. APRIL 7, 1938. COMMERCIAL AVIATION THE WEEK AT CROYDON Commercial Aviation at the Airport of London and Elsewhere^ as Seen by "A. Viator" ONE of this spring's services which is worth watchingwhen it arrives at Croydon is the 09.45 "in." whichgets its passengers to town by 10.30 or there- abouts. It is just an aerial "City man's train," and Amsterdam and Rotterdam are the suburbs in this case, for you never see anyone on that machine, morning after morning, except 14 or 20 obvious business men making a day trip to London. They mostly return to their homes by the 18.45 England-Holland connection. One of last week's interesting passengers was six-year- old Master Terrence Owen Mathews, who left by Imperial Airways for Port Bell, Uganda, quite unaccompanied. The trip is one of 4,600 miles, and Terrence will be met at the other end by his father. After that sort of journey Terrence will probably take a pretty strong line in the family circle when travellers' yarns are being swapped. Another schoolboy traveller on his own was 11-year-old Peter Packer from London to Athens. Some excitement was caused recently, when International Air Freight brought in a couple of machines full of a regu- lar air-travelling zoo. Among the many creatures were mongooses, flamingoes, cranes, phalangers (or flying squir- rels), oppossum, monkeys, an armadillo (a-dilloing accord- ing to tradition), and a toucan, which did not remark on arrival: "My goodness, my Guinness." There were assorted birds in cages and tropical fish in tanks. Imperials and K.L.M. often carry special tanks fitted with a sort of bicycle-pump attachment for aerating the water during the journey. The tanks contain sea horses. A suggestion that these creatures should be carried in soda- water syphons, to save labour on the air trip, was turned down with unexpected contumely. Quite a big special charter was arranged by Imperial Airways last week. High officials of the Ford Motor Company left here by Imperial D.H. 86 Dryad flown by Capt. Digby, and an Olley Air Sendee Rapide was sub- chartered for the job. The flight is via such places as Rome, Naples, Rhodes, Alexandria, Cairo, Stamboul and Salonica, and back via Bucharest and Budapest. Highbrow Information I have just been reading a brochure issued to the public by a leading American air company. It discusses quite a number of matters which we in Europe are inclined, rightly or wrongly, to regard as internal affairs and not for travellers. High-altitude flying and the fact that it is checked by the flight analyser barograph, flight planning and dis- patch, weather reporting, cancellation of flights, reserve motor power, anti-static devices, de-icing, maintenance and overhaul are all simply explained, and even such matters as the use of Link Trainers, the flying laboratory, the salaries of pilots, and the organisation for supervising pilots' health are fairly fully gone into. I believe these things interest the intelligent air traveller, and give him, or her, confidence in the company, and I know that an American traveller who has read this booklet would seem like a wizard airline executive to an ordinary European traveller. All the same, I see nothing novel in the booklet, and nothing at all that the average up-to-date, properly equipped European air line is not doing also. Take pilots' health service, for example. The Dutch company has its own resident medical officer, with con- sulting rooms and the rest at Schiphol. Not onlv is the ROYAL EQUIPMENT : Inside King Gm^i * i uicival Q.6,a flying picture of which appears on page 335. On the right . is the very complete Marconi two-way radio equipment withD/F (or homing) loop, the graduated control wheel of which can be seen at the top of the picture. Interesting features of ;the Q.6 dashboard are the trimming cranks on the throttle ' bank, the D.H. constant-speed airscrew controls at the top •of the dash to th« right of the throttles, and the vacuum- :operated flap control below the airscrew levers. All the six j seats have Irvin seat-type parachutes. health of pilots and crews attended to, but that of the; whole personnel of the firm. Whatever may be termed: medico-aeronautical science, from oxygen in trans-Alpine • planes to tropical diseases and their prevention on the';. Far Eastern route, comes under the medical officer, and ait;;; special branch of his work is the very complete organisa- tion for the conveyance of invalids by air. One excellent point in the American booklet is the P10"^ vision of weather data for passengers. They don't under-? stand it, of course, but it makes them feel important, gives an extra kick to their normal topic of conversation, and does them no harm. What man does not love to pose as a weather wizard? ( : Actually, the service is designed to combat that "from.- the office window," forecasting which people are liable lo do for themselves. A grey sky, and perhaps a grimy window-pane, has been responsible for many a cancella- tion when flying conditions were perfect all along the In"- That vexed question of tarmac parking has been pleasantly settled, with a certain amount of give and take all round, by various British and foreign firms, thus saving the risk of a bigger Noah's Ark rearmament race. Noan s Ark, by the way, is the unofficial name for the very <;<« nified covered gangway used by one company for emb<n v ing passengers. It seems to have an uncanny attraction for otaer people's passengers, who know darn well they ought )•" to dive into its depths. Not long ago, a couple of sun
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