Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 1935. EMPIRE AIR SERVICE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 137, 22 March 1935, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 1935. EMPIRE AIR SERVICE.

In submitting the Air Estimates in the House of Commons Sir Philip Sassoon spoke of the great development of the Empire air mail service and that co-operation between the responsible parties aimed at quicker and more frequent services and the carriage of all first-class Empire mails without surcharge. A difficulty at present is that there is no international freedom of the air. Purely private flying, under the terms of the Air Convention which dates from an initial agreement in 1919, is permitted over all territory of the contracting parties, but commercial aviation is treated differently. Protracted bargaining has been entailed in the efforts to get a number of nations to permit such use of the air above their territories, which it is now agreed beyond question is within their rights of sovereignty. For instance, British flight across Italy en route for Egypt and India, and Italian flight to Somaliland by way of Egypt, involved much bargaining. Some 'thirty countries have subscribed to the Air Convention, but limited in scope as it is, and offering a basis for fuller understanding, the signatories do not yet include the United States, Germany, Russia, Turkey, China, Brazil and the Argentine, to name exceptions important in size of country although not equally important in situation. In the arrangements for the Melbourne Air Race, it will be remembered, Turkey refused Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Mr and Mrs Mollison their requests for permission to fly over Turkish territory. This refusal is significant of the territorial obstacle besetting the present Imperial scheme, and it can well be believed that it envisages an abandonment of the customary transEuropean route to India and taking instead a way on which Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria and the Persian Gulf (where the Arabian side has already been used because of Persia s objections to British use of the island of Bahrein) will be strategic stoppingplaces. To get an All-Red airway is not easy, but by using the reported route for large flying-boats the ditticulty may be overcome, .this item apart, the British project is to be regarded as a natural extension of what has been already done. It may be profitably extended further by transAtlantic services between Britain and Canada, for which leading constructors are reported to have begun to build suitable craft. The trans-Tasman link and even a service across the Pacific are also to be accounted possible in the future— perhaps sooner than is currently expected. At an events, the Air Ministry s announcement presages a vast and ear y envelopment meaning much tor the Empire.