EMPIRE MAILS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 297, 15 December 1936, Page 10

EMPIRE MAILS.

EFFECTS. OF NEW SCHEME.

FORTY LARGE CRAFT ENGAGED.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

(By Air Mail.)

LONDON, November 24

The effect on air traffic of the_ new Empire air mail scheme, which is to begin next year, was described yesterday by Mr. D. H. Handover, traffic manager of Imperial Airways. .He delivered, the Brancker Memorial Lecture in London at the Institute of Transport. It was estimated, he said, that the mail to be carried would amount to about 16,500,000 ton-miles a year. This did not include mail between the Empire and foreign countries or such inter-Empire mail as Kenya to India or Hongkong to Lagos. Twenty tons of mail, or nearly two million letters, would leave England each week.

' The normal weekly services contemplated were: London-Sydney, two; London-Singapore, three; London-Egypt, nine; London-Kisuniu, three; LondonDurban, two, with provision for connections to China and West Africa.

The Christmas peak period would necessitate the use of about forty large aircraft day and night backwards and forwards for about four weeks, running seven services a week to Australia, niii3 to India, 15 to Egypt and five to Africa, all with their compensating return schedules. Air Comfort for Passengers. Hitherto passengers had generally outweighed mail and freight. Under the new scheme mail would outweigh passengers and freight. The first of the new fleet of flying boats, Mr. Handover announced, already in service on the trans-Mediterranean section "is achieving results well bej-ond our forecast." These flying boats, he added, were the fastest in the world. Tliey had a standard of silence and comfort far .in advance of any other air vehicle.

Mr. Handover mentioned that one difficult problem of air transport was the provision of trained personnel. The business being a new one, the supply was limited, and that applied to every grade of personnel. Psychology Tests for Staff. Members of the commercial staff were generally- brought into the company as trainees selected from applicants from public and secondary schools. To ensure that they were temperamentally fitted to' carry out the requirements of Imperial Airways, they were all examined by the National Institute of Industrial Psychology. Referring to the difficulties of providing comfort for air passengers, Mr. Handover said Imperial Airways nowhad a chair of their own invention in which the passenger could at will sit upright for meals, 101 l back for reading, or recline to doze or sleep. The problem of keeping food cold without carrying the weight of either refrigerating apparatus or ordinary ice was now being solved by the use of dry ice or frozen liquid carbon dioxide.