NIGHT AIR SERVICE TO GERMANY

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21989, 13 January 1937, Page 9

NIGHT AIR SERVICE TO GERMANY

BRITISH COMPANY BUYS JUNKER AEROPLANES (Received January 13, 12.40 a.m.) LONDON, January 12. British Airways has bought two German Junker aeroplanes, fitted with American engines, for service on the London-Hanover night route. The purchases are reported to be due to the Air Ministry's refusal to allow the D.H.86 type to fly at night. The company has already bought American Lockheed Electras for this service. The "Aeroplane" of December 2 said: "A good deal has appeared in the press about the withdrawal of the D.H. 86a liners from service, and inasmuch as the earlier D.H.B6's were externally identical, a certain air of mystery was inevitable. When the original type was modified for variable-pitch airscrews and a higher loading, the structure was strengthened, with a consequent slight change in the weight and its distribution. One result was a deterioration in directional stability. This is not normally a serious matter; actually few aeroplanes are positively stable .in yaw, and many successful types are decidedly not. .;. . Nevertheless, the Air Ministry decided that the experimental stages of a winter night service should have every safeguard, and grounded such machines of this type as seemed, in the opinion of a test pilot, not to be stable enough. Certain operating companies, which had already run their D.H. 86a equipment for hundreds of hours by day and night, were naturally not pleased; but in the meantime a D.H. 86a with a slightly larger fin is reported to have passed the most exacting tests satisfactorily." British Airways ordered, the. Lockheed machines because British companies were so busy with orders for the Royal Air Force that they could not give delivery for at least a year.