A QUEEN WHO FLIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 53, 4 March 1925, Page 4

A QUEEN WHO FLIES.

WEARS HIGH BOOTS AND FUR

CAP. ! LUXURIOUS TRAVEL. i (From Oar Own Correspondent) i LONDON, January 20. 1 I first met Miss Mary Abbott at Hendon Flying Grounds and on many occasions since, on which duty and pleasure took mc to see aviation disj playe, Miss Abbott was sure to be there. For like a wise journalist ehe has to her all round journalistic work added a special subject on which she know 3 pretty well all that can be known. Her pet subject is aviation and in particular what women are doing in the air. It was, therefore, only natural when "Airways," the new and only air travel magazine, wished for an article on a queen who flies, Miss Abbott was obviously .t-he one woman journalist who could write it.

Fifteen years ago, says Miss Abbott, a certain royal lady standing on the darkening plain of Betheny, near Reims, watched another of her sex create the record of being the first Englishwoman to make a passenger flight in a hearierthan air machine.

Since then, this royal lady—now Queen Elizabeth of Selsium —has rreqtientlv followed Miss Gertrude ißacon's example; ghe has even gone one better, for she now possesses an aeroplane of her own, a. gift from the British firm, -which four years ago, supplied one to King Albert's order. During the war she more than once came over to England by plane, to see her daughter, 'Princess *Jose, who I had been placed at a convent school at , Brentwood. But, perhaps, the royal flight to receive the -most publicity the world over, was that made by King Albert and Queen Elizabeth when, they journeyed over here by plane to attend i the marriage of Viscount Curzon of Kedleston's daughter, trith Mr. Oswald iMoslev.

"Watching the royal lady clamber out of the aeroplane at Famborougrh. on that occasion, and shake hands with the Chevalier Willy CoppenE, the famous Belgium "''ace,"" who had acted as her pilot, one "wondered if the Queen had compared her own snug quarters in the cockpit of that streamline two-seater with the manner in which the first Englishwoman had gone a-Sying at Reims. For, at that, the first aviation meeting in the history of the world, an air pilot's place was on a chair-like seat on an open platform, and, there being no passenger seat on Roger Sommer's biplane. Miss Gertrude Bacon had to crouch down behind him with her back to the very warm radiator of the engine.

Her [Majesty of Belgium always "wears high boots -when flying. But low shoes are warm enough for the iroman who, not yet able to afford her own twoseater plane, travels by the cabin types on the the cross-Channel air service. And for the same reason she need rot follow the Toyal example of wearing , a fur-lined leather cap and coat.