AIR SERVICES IN EMPIRE

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21315, 7 November 1934, Page 11

AIR SERVICES IN EMPIRE

Gradual Speeding Up IMPERIAL AIRWAYS NOT TO BE RUSHED (BRITISH OFFICIAL WIBELESS.) (Received November 6, 8.20 p.m.) RUGBY, November 5. Sir Eric Geddes, chairman of directors, speaking at the annual meeting of Imperial Airways, Ltd., said no commercial service could base its plans upon a racing event like the Melbourne Centenary air race. Imperial Airways had for many months planned a 7;l-day service along the Australian route and it was not going to be frightened off its policy of steady, efficient progress by any fine air race, however remarkable it might be. Sir Eric said the time was approaching when their major fleet would be replaced by faster aircraft without, however, hoping to reproduce in normal commercial services the speeds achieved in the race. It was out of the question to contemplate flying through the night on regular services with the existing aids to navigation on the Australian route, and it was essential that men and material should work, as routine, well below their capacity. As a general principle the board took the view that a first-class service of high frequency and high speed, catering for passengers and mails together, was better than a high-speed mail schedule and a slow passenger service.

Three four-engined and four twinengined aircraft with top speeds of about 170 miles an hour were under construction, the former for the European services and extensions to them, and the latter for long distance tours and overseas charter work. Cost of Speed The board, so far, had been unable to find a way of increasing speed without considerably increasing costs, which the postal administrators hitherto had been unwilling to meet. "The board considers it most important to provide the highest standards of regularity and safety while keeping fares and mail rates as low as possible, hoping eventually to become independent of subsidies," he said. "This is impossible if others insist on a mad race in subsidised air travel.. We are prepared, however, to operate any services our clients wish to pay for. "The American Post Office loses £4,500.000 annually on fast air mail services, although fuel in America costs a third less than in the British Empire." The cost of fuel, he said, continued to be the most powerful deterrent to high speed. Atlantic Service The plans of the company for a trans-Atlantic air service, prepared after close and continuing research, were referred to but not disclosed. Sir Eric said, however, that acting on their research they were about to order, under an agreement with the Air Ministiy, aircraft which should provide range and pay load to meet the requirements of the route more satisfactorily than anything else yet projected. Without wishing to convey _ the idea that they would be in a position to establish a trans-Atlantic service before the next annual meeting, he said that they were determined on a solution of the problem. They had decided months ago to order for experimental work two flying-boats, one for the New York-Bermuda service, and two land aeroplanes, larger and faster than existing machines. Meanwhile a substantial increase in the speed and frequency of existing services might be expected. The service to Johannesburg was immediately to be made a bi-weekly one, and a bi-weekly service to Singapore was under consideration.

IThc sense of lite .statement about the cost of fuel may have been altered in transmission, for according to previous statements the cost of fuel to Imperial Airways is greater, in comparison witli American costs, than Sir Eric Gcddes states. In parts of the routes the taxation on petrol is greater than the total cost in America, and in the desert sections transport makes it almost fantastically expensive.] DOUGLAS MACHINES MAY BE BUILT IN ENGLAND (Received November 6, 11.15 p.m.) LONDON, November 6. The "Daily Telegraph" understands that Mr Anthony Fokker has purchased a large factory rear Stockport for Ihe manufacture of American Douglas aeroplanes of a type similar to that in which Parmentier and Moll competed in the air race.