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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1128.PDF
APRIL 20, 1939 FLIGHT. 397 COMMERCIAL AVIATION " Flight " photograph. TUCKED UP : The Percival Q6 in its latest form, with undercarriage retracted. This machine is one of two for Australia. THE WEEK AT CROYDON "A. Viator." in His Air Transport Commentary, Discusses the Need for Tarmac Organisation, and Remarks on Various Traffic Figures FROM my '' window in Thrums '' I see the beginning of a tarmac congestion which will become increas ingly difficult to deal with as time goes on and will necessitate a definite system of numbered berths to be allocated to departing machines. Arriving aircraft really ought to pull up in a space allocated to arrivals only, because at the moment it is possible for a machine which is being unloaded to block the egress of one departing. There are in summer over a hundred daily arrivals and departures from Croydon, and what makes it worse is that departures (and, to a lesser extent, arrivals) tend to bunch at the same time of day. Services with long-distance con nections to maintain must all start around 8.45 to 9.30 a.m. Departures made earlier do not suit air travellers. Unlike the elderly gent in the fruit-salt advert., air pas sengers do not seem to awake with the lark and spring straight up to the ceiling wide awake and with an expres sion of mingled alarm and agony on their faces. Providence, working in its usual mysterious way, has so ordained that the Croydon tarmac is not, at these peak periods, thronged with huge Ensigns, but next summer, what with the Douglas D.C.4 and, perhaps, the new Fairey air liner, the chances are that some aeroplanes will have to unload in the vicinity of Croydon Town Hall. Incidentally, the popularity of the D.C.3 was well illus trated on the tarmac the other day, when there were no less than four house flags of different national companies flying from four of these machines at the same time. There was the K.L.M. orange, white and blue, with the com pany's crest in black—and in passing I may mention that this flag, except for the crest, is, I understand, the ancient Merchant Service flag of Holland. Then there was the Swissair flag, a white cross on a red ground, and that of Sabena, colourful with its triangles of black, red, yellow and blue divided by white, and with a white star thereon. Last, but not least, there fluttered the Swedish Air Lines' house flag of neat yellow and blue with the A.B.A. speed bird. I should have been glad to see the flag once more, also upon a D.C.3, of that gallant but ruthlessly suppressed company, the Czechoslovakian Air Lines. Easter air traffic was amazing in spite of the rumblings from certain huge and powerful countries that they were in danger of being attacked by very small, weak nations and might have to obliterate the latter in sheer self-defence. Imperial Airways seem to have regained their lead on the Paris run, for the moment anyway, for holiday figures showed Imperials 520 to Paris and 433 back, Air France 365 to Paris and 345 return, whilst British Airways had 165 to Paris and 167 back. Mystery surrounds the fate of the hundred odd who did not come back, but perhaps they are jolly souls whose party was on such a scale that they don't yet realise that the holiday is over. Passenger traffic keeps up in spite of the temporary falling off of the refugee business, but the most popular route, I learn from all sides, is to and from Paris. People are flecking to Paris from Scandinavia, from Holland and from England. " Gawld Flyke," the yellow horse used to brush the tarmac with a rotary brush, is wise in the ways of aero planes. One landed so close over his head that he defi nitely prepared to lie down. None of your startled rearing- up and bolting about our wily quadruped, and he will stop when necessary and let people land under his nose and across his bows. The Wright Way Wrightways gave me a few interesting figures for 1938. In that year they carried 1,149,813 lb. of freight and 612 passengers. They made 3,642 flying hours, which is a stout effort, worthy of much praise. I am sorry to learn, inci dentally, that our old friend Capt. Duggan has left Wright- ways. He has been with the firm since the start. The Venice-Milan-Paris-London service of Avio Linee Italiane started last Sunday, and it was quite a treat for the Sabbath crowd in the main hall to see such resplendent uniforms. The price of bar gold, if bars on sleeves and what not are any criterion, must have eased somewhat in Italy lately. It happened, as usual, that a pilot of a certain airline forgot to alter his watch on Saturday night, so that the ground staff had to rush across to the hotel and remark, re early tea, "Ah fill the cup, what boots it to repeat, how time is slipping underneath our feet," and again, this time to the slumbering pilot, "Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight, and lo! the Hunter of the East has caught the Sultan's turret (or control tower) in a ncose of light."
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