AERIAL LAW.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 69, 21 March 1919, Page 7

AERIAL LAW.

THE OF THE AIR. (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON", January 21. One man in every twenty they say in America has a motor car —even if it is only a Ford. What about aeroplanes? They are to be had now for a coupie of hundred pounds. So, hey presto, for flight and a flying machine in every back yard. But before that happens a few little laws have to be laid down, and that is one of the earnest preoccupations of our flying men to-day.

Oueen Bess is said to have remarked to the Spanish ambassador then at her Court, with true Elizabethan hauteur— and on an occasion before the Spanish Armada was won —"The use of the sea and air is common to all." Are we then to adhere to the Elizabethan rule. 1 ti ow not.

As the Dominion, too, is organising aeTial night with the best, it is worth knowing what this side of the woild is doing prior to the definite conference among Allies soon to be held to blaze a track to legislative action. Some of the principal questions to be discussed at this conference in Paris are the means to be taken to prevent airmen of various nati-onalitics from avoiding the Customs barriers, and also how to prevent Herman postal or commercial aeroplanes from being converted in a few moments into bombing machines. The United States. Great Britain. Frauce, Italy, and Belgium will be represented at the conference, the decisions of which, after being duly drawn up. will have to be accepted as part of the lVace Treaty by Germany and her former Allies.

Major-General Sir F. 11. Sykcs, Chief of the Air Staff, said the other day with regard to lhe work of the conference that even when agreement has been reached much diplomatic machinery remains to be pet in motion before aerial services can be actually started. The Royal Air Force has lately been engaged in preparations for n postal -service across the North Sea, but in regard to these, we are still legally in a state of war. there is the difficulty of the three-mile territorial water limit, upon which agreement must be reached. For overland routes aerodromes must be constructed or lm proved, and stores of fuel and other necessaries provided, and some of th" places are typically difficult of access by land. It is clear, therefore, that international aerial routes cannot be developed unaided by the State."

In the matter of the three-mile limit, e.g., what is to be done? The limit was decided on because then three miles was a maximum gun-shot range, bat super dreadnoughts hadn't then been thought of.

Even as a matter of affecting one nation alone, the question bristles with difficulties. A land owner, according to English law and the law of most countries, if he owns a pier ot land, has the right to build ou it as high ns he likes. But has he really any property in the actual air above his land.

Supposing one of the tloatinj; hotels of the future a super-Zeppelin, took up its temporary abode at a height of two miles above a large estate, could the estate owner proceed against the hotel owner for trespass, or charge him rent for occupation of his (the estate owner's) share of the firmament? A cer"ain American corporation—anxious to get in first—has passed an ordinance claiming jurisdiction up to a height of 7000 ft.

As regards aerial jurisdiction there are three points of view: —

(1) The air space is free altogether.

(2) There should be a territorial air*l zone analog-us to the territorial water I limit; above that line the air will be free. j

(,'J) The air space above a Sovereign State is owned by that State.

Th. first, what might be termed the Elizabethan view, may be put out of court, at least for the present, the very question already quoted for discussions it the conference involve the dismissal of view one.

The second has much to be said for it. Fauchille. the French international jurist, recommended a territorial zone from r-00 to 1..00 metres high, but that was before the era of powerful anti-air-craft artillery, (The latest British A.A. gun has an effective range of 2.5.000 feet -perpendicularly.) At the Ghent conference, in 1000. Westlakc pointed out: "In the air the higher one ascends the greater is the destructive power ot objects thrown upon the earth. On the sea the further people go from the coast the less is the risk of their causing destruction and disturbance upon the coast." Probably the false analogy of the sea, already denounced by famous jurists, will soon receive its quietus. A certain amount of legislation has already been carried out on the basis of the third point of view.

Probably the earliest reference in a war proclamation to aerial law is that issued on November 13, 1014, by President Wilson as to the neutrality of the Panama Canal. Articles 14 and 15 provide that wireless telegraphy by a belligerent ship in the canal zone should be used only on canal business, and that any aircraft carried on such ships shouid not be allowed to fly.

It has been embodied by Britain, France and Russia, in recent legislation; was asserted during the war when Dutch troops fired at Zeppelins passing over Holland, and by Switzerland when British airmen lost their way in a flight to Friedricltshavcn and passed over Swiss territory, and ha. been adopted by the Aerial Transport Committee in recommending -the sovereignty and rightful jurisdiction of the Crown over "the air superincumbent on all parts of His Majesty's Dominions and the territorial waters adjacent thereto."