ADVANCE IN FLYING

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 93, 14 January 1936, Page 10

ADVANCE IN FLYING

Early Service Over the South Island CONTRAST IN MACHINES The advance in aeroplane construction aud performance was illustrated to passengers ou the Union Airways liner Kotuku on Saturday, when the machine, on a flight from Dunedin to Palmerston North, was taken over the Kaikoura Mountains between Christchurch and Blenheim. At 10,000 feet to cross the ranges, the machine, with its four engines roarirg in unison, flew as steadily as when circling an aerodrome, and for the passengers the feeling of security, even above such a multitude of jagged peaks, was complete. To Squadron Leader M. C. McGregor, who was the chief pilot, it must have recalled more adventurous but less secure days. After many experiences of crossing the ranges on one engine, it must have seemed too easy on four. In 1930 Squadron Leader McGregor made an attempt to establish a regular air service between Christc-liureh and Dunedin, flying so that southward passengers could connect from the interisland steamer at Christchurch and be in Dunedin for lunch and northward passengers could leave Dunedin eariy in the afternoon and catch the steamer for Wellington at Lyttelton. For some months he maintained his schedule, but the venture did not make a popular appeal aud was abandoned. He used a D.H. 50 machine, which had been imported by the Royal New Zealand Air Force for aerial photography work aud which was last heard of flying freight for Holden’s Air Transport between the coast and the goldfields of New Guinea. It carried four passengers and had a Puma engine of 250 h.p. On Saturday he was Hying a D.H. BG, which took 12 passengers, with four Gipsy engines of 200 horse-power each. Whereas with his former machine he took nearly two and a half hours between Christchurch and Dunedin, on Saturday he flew the distance in under one hour and a half. Whereas on his former service, with only one engine, be kept over land, on Saturday, with the security of four, he went a considerable distance out to sea.