AIR LINES OF FUTURE

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23539, 17 January 1942, Page 3

AIR LINES OF FUTURE

FORECAST BY BRITISH MINISTER (8.0. W.) RUGBY, January 15. The British Under-Secretary of State for Air (Captain H. H. Balfour), speaking in London, said that the biggest job of post-war world reconstruction would be the building up of air communications, and he drew an imaginary picture of the routes which will be required. “There will be a greyhound route of stratosphere lines flying stages of probably never less than 1000 miles and carrying urgent passengers, freight, and mails. There will be main trunk routes connecting the capitals and other important centres. There will be feeder services spreading out from these capitals and centres to outlying districts of each territory,” he said. Captain Balfour added: “The greatest opportunity for adventure and achievement on the part of the young men of the world will lie in these fields. The members of the British Commonwealth of Nations depend for their strength cn their unity and for their unity on their ability to meet, talk, and trade with each other. The strength of the British Isles as the centre of the Commonwealth rests only upon the fact that it is the capital. We must link up the centre to the outlying nations and the outlying nations must be linked each to the other. “Civilian Air Fleets” “Then alongside and co-operating with each cf the other free nations of the world we can girdle the globe with a ring of civilian air fleets flying for peace but protected by strength. The war has not killed civil air communications. It has only diverted them from peace-time commercial aims to service in the war effort. “Our civil communications link up America, Africa, Egypt, India, Aus-' tralia, and New Zealand. All are kept going regularly. Lines also go to Scandinavia and now to Teheran and Russia. “With equipment scarce and hard to come by because of military priorities, this keeping open of our overseas air communications is a record of which those concerned in civil aviation can well be proud. One thing in the future is certain. The day of the backyard must give place to a policy cf the open sky for those who have fought with us and have thought with us. The airlines of the future will be threads which will bind us ever closer together.”