EMPIRE AIR ROUTES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 34, 10 February 1927, Page 11

EMPIRE AIR ROUTES

INAUGURATION OF SERVICE

(United Press Association.—Copyright.) KHARTOUM, Bth February. Captain T. A. Gladstone, in a Fairey seaplane, has inaugurated a Khartoum-.. Kisuinu air service.

The seaplane to be used in the service is named "The Pelican," and was officially launched on 15th November last at Rochester, on tho banks of the Medway, by Lady Beatrice OrnisbyGore, wife of the Under-Secretary of State for the Dominions. "The Pelican" is a four-seater D.H. 50, fitted with 420 h.p. radial Bristol Jupiter engine, a Fairey-Reed metal air-scvew, and special duralumin floats, and was built to the order of the North Sea Aerial Transport Company. The enterprise is mainly due to the work of Captain Gladstone, who devised the route as part of a scheme of Imperial inter-communication. Mr. OrmsbyGore, during the course of a luncheon subsequent to the. launching, said that the project was one of far-reaching importance, and is the-first link in what will utimately be one of the most important routes of the^. .Empire, that from Cairo to the Cape, a route which should be of first-class- strategic, as well as commercial, importance. The project has been launched in conjunction with the Governments of Kenya Uganda, and the Sudan. It is estimated that at least ten days will be saved m the transmission of mails between London and Kisumu, and with an air line extending north to Cairo the time saved should amount to at least a fortnight. The service is to be once weekly each way, and the route follows the White Nile from Khartoum to Malakal, thence via Mongalla, Butiaba Jinja, to Kisumu, on Lake Victoria. Ayanza, a distance of over 1400 miles