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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 1217.PDF
APRIL 25, 1940 381 COMMERCIAL AVIATION OUR END OF THE ATLANTIC SERVICE : Early next month will start a regular British service between London and Lisbon, linking there with the Pan American Atlantic. Recently an Albatross was flown to Lisbon experimentally, where it is seen (above) at Sintra aerodrome with visitors and hosts. In the centre of the group is our Ambassador to Lisbon, Sir Walford Selby. SELLING AIR TRANSPORT "A. Viator " On Saying It with Flowers, and with a Silver Spoon Across One's Tonsils LAST week I remarked that the rather wild stories ofK.L.M. pilots making aerial dashes from Oslo to-^ Sweden were not altogether confirmed. My reasons for doubting these yarns about thrilling night flights frommilitary occupied territories were several. No neutral pilot with any sense will take a commercial air liner into apotential air battle area, any more than a merchant skipper will steam through the midst of a naval engagement. Air liner skippers are not the desperate swashbucklerssome newspapers make them out to be. They are cautious, peaceful folk, whose only object is to avoid trouble and tobring their ship, passengers and cargo, safely to port. It is always madness for the commander of a compara-tively slow airliner to make any sort of spectacular dash without the permission of whatever belligerent happens tobe in control at the moment, and Commander Van Dyk, of K.L.M., himself underlined this fact when he asserted thatat Oslo airport he saw the wreckage of two Norwegian planes which had been shot down when attempting toescape. " The wreckage of their machines," he said, " was a warning of what would happen if I tried to take off." So all the fine confused verbiage some newspapershanded out amounted to nothing at all, except a fit of mendacious hysterics. Poor Van Dyk, who is definitely°ne of the "lean kine," was referred to as the 15-stone Dutch skipper, and also as the man known throughoutEurope as the Captain Kettle of the Air. That is the utmost idiocy for Van Dyk is clean-shaven,and the only man who has ever had that title conferred on him is Capt. O. P. Jones, of Imperial Airways, who has both torpedo beard and the cigar of Cutcliffe-Hyne'struculent little hero. Capt. O. P. Jones, by the way, with Capts. L. V. Mes-ssnger and J. T. Percy, is the pilot who commenced the Airways Corporation England-Portugal service with D. H.Frobisher machines which, rather surprisingly, A. C. seems to have retained, instead of losing them to O. C. TeapotLids consigned to our gallant troops in France. This service will shortly be properly on its feet, by the way, and carry-ing passengers, freight and, above all, mails, as a regular service. On the K.L.M. Amsterdam-Portugal line passen-gers are to be carried, and this line is run by Commander Parmentier and other K.L.M. veterans. Reception at Lisbon I hear that the reception of the first K.L.M. plane atLisbon was quite an impressive one. As usual K.L.M. said it with flowers, in the form of some boxes of beautifulblooms gathered in Holland the same morning, which were handed to the wife of the President of the PortuguessRepublic. That is a proper K.L.M. habi^ and I remember a number of occasions on which box after box of flowersconsigned to local notables and to local hospitals have been unloaded at North of England airports, Speke, Ringway,Hull, Doncaster, etc., when air lines from Holland were opened up to those places. It is not only a matter of plea-sant courtesy, but one of showmanship combined with salesmanship. My criticism of civil aviation, as understood in somecompanies, is that it is too high hat—all pin-stripe pants,
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