QUEEN MOTHER WILL FLY 25,000 MILES

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28492, 23 January 1958, Page 2

QUEEN MOTHER WILL FLY 25,000 MILES

[By SUSAN VAUGHAN]

London” When the Queen Mother leaves London Airport at 8 a.m. on January 28 she will be the first member of the Royal Family to set off on a flight round the world. She will visit Australia and New Zealand by way of Montreal, Vancouver, Honolulu, Fiji, Auckland, Perth, returning by way of the Cocos Islands, Mauritius, Nairobi, and Malta. She will fly 25,000 miles in 42 days, and is due back in London on March 10. The Queen will give her mother a farewell party at Buckingham Palace on the night before she leaves. But the City of London is not expected to give the Queen Mother the usual welcome home luncheon which has marked the end of previous Royal tours. The Queen has already dispensed with this, to save money, and the Queen Mother, will almost certainly follow her lead. There is no surprise at the Queen Mother’s choice to fly all the way on her tour. She has always been one of the most airminded members of the Royal Family. Informal Tour Her first flight was as early as 1935. from Hendon to Brussels. Since then she has logged hundreds of flying hours. In 1952 she took over the controls of a Comet jet airliner while it was flying oyer France, and her last longdistance flight was last July, when she flew in a Britannia to Nyasaland. This time, the Queen Mother will fly in a 8.0.A.C. long-range DC-7C airliner. Her tour of Australia and New Zealand will be kept‘'as informal as possible, and

has been arranged so that she will meet a great many ordinary people. It will be the longest visit to Australia and New Zealand since her first trip there 31 years ago. That was in January, 1927, when she and her husband, then the Duke of York, sailed for Australia and New Zealand on the cruiser Renown. They were away for six months and visited the ’principal cities in both countries. While they were abroad, their baby daughter, now the Queen, had her first birthday. Since then, the Queen Mother has travelled to Canada, the United States and nearly all the Commonwealth and Scandinavian countries. She has been just as active since her daughter's Coronation as before it. In July. 1953, she and Princess Margaret flew to Southern Rhodesia. In the autumn of 1954 she visited New York and Washington. In 1956 she visited Paris: in 1957. the Central African Federation. After this Royal tour, she will carry out engagements at home while her daughters travel abroad. Tn March, the Queen and Prince Philip visit Holland; in April, Princess Margaret will go to the West Indies and in July she will go to Canada.