The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, MARCH 1937. THE DAY OF AVIATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 67, 20 March 1937, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, MARCH 1937. THE DAY OF AVIATION.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the icrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good ths* we can do.

A pilot in one of the companies incorporated in Air France has completed his fiftieth flight across the South Atlantic. He is the first to do so. A cable this week gave the news in a few words. Yet in that brief item, worth little as news standards go, what implications there are of " things to come," what evidence of the most spectacular era of man's development! It may mean something

more to New Zealanders just now, since the Dominion is witnessing the progress of an event in aviation which will be of historical importance. In general, however, because people live in the midst of changes, rapid now as never before, they do not realise them.

It is difficult to recall that the first flight across the South Atlantic Ocean took place only fifteen years ago. Commanders Cabral and Continho, of Portugal, flew from Cape Verde, in Africa, to Brazil. Little has been heard in these parts of that flight, perhaps because public attention has been fixed on the rapid, almost bewildering, succession of individual flights over the North Atlantic and other oceans, flights with which are associated such names as Ross and Keith Smith, Cobham, i Lindbergh, Hinkler, Krngsford Smith, Wilkins, Post and Gatty, the Mollisons, Miss Amelia Earhart, C. W. A. Scott and Campbell Black— and Miss Jean Batten. Of these individual pioneering flights some stand out more than others. The whole world was affected with America's excitement when Lindbergh flew the Atlantic solo' for the first time. Who, in Australia and New Zealand, can forget the breathless interest of Kingsford Smith's flight down the Pacific, and his later crossing of the Tasman! Much later came the Melbourne air race, and a world which thought itself accustomed to long-distance aviation was forced to take notice of the achievement of Scott and Campbell Black in flying to Australia from England in 71 hours 18 seconds. Their feat has' been described as " flying tandem on a razor blade." Close behind them —it wa9 a portents—came the Dutch passenger 'plane piloted by Moll and Parmentier, which astonished all observers by the smooth efficiency of its progress in competition with 'planes that had been specially built for the race.

There have always been people who asked what good these flights have done. A glance at the airways of the world will give the answer. The pioneers, using machines which make present-day airmen wonder at the daring of the pilots, showed what could be done. Aeroplane designers have made the achievement easier, more certain and more safe, but the initial impetus and inspiration was given by the men whose exploits at the time were considered reckless and useless. But though their part should never be forgotten, the day of the aerial adventurers is over. The man who has made his fiftieth flight is a pilot in a regular service, one of hundreds of such pilots who " fly to schedule" every day in many countries. At present a giant 'plane is bound for New Zealand on a survey flight which is intended to be the forerunner of another regular service, over one of the longest and loneliest air routes in the world. New Zealanders, owing to their isolation, most naturally look forward to the arrival of the Pan-American clipper as an exciting event. But the flight will have a greater and more permanent importance. New Zealand has been sluggish in its response to the airmindedness of the rest of the world. Its own internal air system is incomplete, and some people still regard flying as something for the next generation. The advent of the Pan-American service will do much to change this attitude, and to hasten the day when aviation will come into its own in New Zealand.