BRITAIN IN THE AIR

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 122, 25 May 1935, Page 23

BRITAIN IN THE AIR

COMMERCE LINERS.

NEW SPEEDING-UP POLICY. STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY. Great Britain for years followed a studied policy in her commercial air development. While her ocean-going commerce.was created to find and keep world markets, her aviation was designed to knit the far-flung Empire closer together. In accordance with general practice in Europe, Britain designed her commercial air liners as potential bombers or troop carriers. Big, steady, efficient, flying boats and land 'planes came out of her factories with every quality except speed, as speed is known in the United States.

The late Lord Thompson, British Air Minister, once- eaid to tho writer: "Ninety miles an hour is fast enough for us. Our great traffic is with the Continent, and the distances are short as compared with distances in America. So Britain -built her Hannibals and Cyclops, her Southamptons and Caleuttas—all good load carriers and all slow. Even with tho extension of the Imperial Airways line to India and now to Australia in the east, and to Capetown in the south, Imperial Airways refused to stress speed.

Last October the great international air race from London to Melbourne* awakened Great Britain to the need of speed. Then when her gesture for limitation of commercial aircraft failed at Geneva, Great Britain went into action. The Air Ministry submitted to the Government a programme for the spending of £2,000,000 on new commercial equipment for Imperial Airways, to be ready in two years. Two-thirds of the planes to be built under the plan are to be fly-ing-boats capable of a. 3 J -ton load and a 3000-mile range. Schedules to South Africa and Australia are to be tripled. The Far Eastern route is to be extended Ito .-China, whero to-day, by virtue of its arrangement with the Chinese Government, a Pan-American Airways subsi[iary is operating. These same boats are to be capable of flying the North Atlantic. In this last fact observers on the American side of the water believe they sec the reason why Imperial Airways has been slow to move in co-operation with the Americans for mutual bases in Bermuda, in Newfoundland and tho Maritimes. Concessions to operate from theso points are exclusively the property of the great British, airways system. , Meanwhile, Pan-American Airways has tie boats ready to fly tho ocean, but must await Great Britain's permissidh to utilise these bases for a transatlantic line Bermuda wants the American line to start now and'has even suggested that Imperial Airways charter American clippers for a three-hour service between Bermuda ami New York, pending tho day that British flying boats are ready to join in the service. Reversal of Policy. The new British plan constitutes a reversal of the policy followed by Britain for the last fifteen years. Instead of an air service developed primarily for the purpose of welding the Empire, the new policy envisions this international struggle for world markets Tho Australian air lino is a etep in the speed routes to China and the Last Indies. The new flying boats are to be the air Cunardcra of the North Atlantic andalthough little has been said on tins subject—probablv an extension into tho Latin-American field also, with fast con-nections-north and south between Halifax and Bermuda, Nassau, Trinidad and ?gSK doubled. The British Post Office Department is to turn over all first-class mail on the key routes to the air liners. All Empire routes are to be equipped for night flying, aPd,.with the mail Vβ an ineome-produemp ] backlog, a direct subsidy for the building■ o equipment and operations, and much larger and faster aucraft as Cunarders of the air, Great Britain U girdmff hciself for the great race for markets and trade. __ , v . n^a

Germany and France. Like Great Britain, Germany and France propose to obtain their share of Si trade through the speed of their "reat air liners on the- international routes. Moreover, the enterprising Air Ministries of these two njttrij?™* amono- the first to recognise that the "Sc for world trade on the sea is be'in" repeated in the air. . The need for speed and more speed in the moving of mails and goods and people, with South America one objective and the markets of the Far East and Africa the others, has been response for the 'levclopmcnt of great flyingboats and the concentration of all a r lines in these countries m single air trusts, supported by Government subSi< Ten years ago German and French air lines were being opened in South AmerWand to-day Air France and the Lufthansa are. moving along Readily and swiftlv toward positions.of first importance. Their, routes in South AnVerfra parallel for thousands of miles ihTair ines of the- Yankee clippers. "vitht" plans for a trans-contmenta Ino toViping and Shanghai She is watchtaff Imperial Airways with a line of China Airways.

Giant Flying Boats. Illness •£*« i° S»X;.o, Cl.ilo. carrying rn.il; tojrw ♦ v.on 70 timee The new airehip and e will carry a greater lO Fr"™ee and Germany are watching t r,-cat domestic air-lines of the United Istates connecting nil the.trade cen res 1 oi! America with the intenm .onal line 1 to South America.—(N.A.JN. a.j