AIR ROUTES

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 58, 6 September 1917, Page 2

AIR ROUTES

TRAVEL OF THE FUTURE

AN AVIATOR'S DREAM.

(PROM OCR OTTN CORRESPONDBNT.)

LONDON, 26th June.

Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, one of the few survivors of the P. and 0. Persia, and an authority on air, delivered a lecture before the Aeronautical Society, in which he gave a number of fascinating possibilities. Lord Montagu spoke on "The World's Air Routes and their Regulation." A distance of 1200 miles a day may be a regular thing, and the traveller will round the earth in twenty days.

If you leave Ireland, after an early breakfast, say at 7 a.m., and your aeroplane^ makes an average si^eed of 110 miles.an hour, you will reach St. John's m 16£ hours, from which four hours must be deducted in point of solar time, so that you, will be ready for dinner in Newfoundland at 7.30 p.m., local time. Your midday meal will ■be eaten somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. In his suggestion for the** organisation of an aerial route to and from India, Lord Montagu compared the advantages of the southern route, via Naples and Alexandria, to India, and the northern route, from India over the Caspian. Sea and Germany, the first occupying four days and the other three days. The wind systems of the world can be made to Berve the purposes of flying instead of winds being a disadvantage. Wafted by a favouring gale, the speed of a machine may fie doubled, so that meteorology and the study of wind currents will be of supreme 'importance. - IMPERIAL AVIATION. . "These.wind systems," he said, "and the consequent tendencies to a permanent direction of wind, either all. the year round or at certain well-defined seasons,/ have a _ most important bearing on the world's'air routes. We can follow the mam currents instead of fighting against them..' The British Empire is in a peculiarly favourable position, for the development of Imperial aviation, for our widely-separated possessions will enable our air traffic round the world, over land and sea, to proceed without having to ask for concessions from other nations. I do not believe that continuous flying by night and day will be popular or practical for many years to come, so I allow in all my calculations for passenger serr vices for two periods of flying every day of 600 miles each, or ten hours in all, which at 120 mile_s an hour, would give the reasonable distance, of. 1200 miles covered between dawn and sunset. I think a rest by night will be more popular than a continuance of the journey ia the dark. Then, as now, the wonderful views of the earth benpath will be one of the greatest inducements to fly by day. Mails, on the other, hand, will probably proceed continuously lam oT opinion also that the pilots will have regularly denned stages, like enginedrivers on locomotives on long-distance journeys. By the Southern Atlantic route to North America the 1200 miles of the.first stage to the Azores, via Portugal, will be covered comfortably in > one day under ordinary circumstances, and rest secured that night, while from there the second day's flight to St. John's, Newfoundland, will form another quite possible daylight stage." ■ AIR ZONES. • For the regulation of all traffic, Lord Morttagu'proposed that slow-speed planes should use the lowest levels, 7 and highspeed planes the upper levels of the air. "The' first 20t)0ft from the surface of the ground," he"said, "should be prohibited to air traffic in general, but be usable, of course, by the private owner' of" the soil if he desires, and for .the purpose of descending to his own landing.".

In admitting tile claims that any air should be private, Lord Montagu is conforming to the present law, which supposes that owners of houses and land, or the dwellers on or in {hem, have a right to the air above their property, but he proposes to.limit that claim to 2000 ft.

"Above this private level," he said, "we come to the commercial levels, which I propose shall range from 2000 ft to 4000 ft, on" account of the fact that commerce will, want to operate as cheaply as possible, and to achieve height and speed means extra expenditure of motor 'spirit. And I would make this 2000 ft to 4000 ft usable by silenced planes only, with a maximum speed of 80 miles an hour. Above these commercial levels I propose another zone, 4000 ft to 600Qft. This will "include the genera] air traffic.of the planet for ordinary flying, including a proportion of fast commercial flying. Above 6000 ft to 10,OO0ft, I would reserve the levels for the official planes of.each nation. These levels would be used by its naval, military, and civil forces, and by police planes, for air police will be needed in the same way that policing of routes by land and sea is now necessary."

The air' above 10,000 ft, Lord Montagu suggested, should be internationalised, ■with certain restrictions.