NIGHT AND DAY FLYING

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 92, 20 April 1931, Page 7

NIGHT AND DAY FLYING

A GREAT POSSIBILITY

(From "Tho Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 12th March. Day and night air mail services, linking London with the most distant parts of the Empire in little more than a week, are, ■ according to authoritative British expert opinion, well within the bounds of possibility. The following schedule of regular, business-like operation, dependent on the establishment of high-speed services concerned solely with tho carriage of mails, was sketched by Sir Eobert M'Lean, who is one of the leading men in tho British aircraft industry, in the course of an interview with Lord Amulree, the Air Minister, arranged for a deputation of the London Chamber o_£ Commerce. It epitomises the possibilities of immediate and dramatic acceleration in all existing air services. The times quoted were:— London, to Calcutta 3£ days London to Sydney 7-J days London .to Wellington .. SJ days Acceleration of this order involves a twenty-four-hour schedule throughout the flight and the efficient lighting for night navigation of the routes. Given this organisation there is no doubt that British aircraft constructors are to-day in a position to build immediately fast aeroplanes which could maintain such a, schedule with ease, cruising with full load of mails on board at speeds around 150 and 160 miles an hour. Sir Robert M'Lean pointed out that the average. speed in summer on tho Indian air route betweeii London and Karachi, operated by air liners carrying mails and passenger*, was about 28 miles an hour. Mails, he added, should not be kopt stationary for sixteen hours out of tho twenty-four, because they had to travel at tho samo rate as passengers.. Passengers and mails should be separated. Where traffic did not justify separate passenger and mail services over a routo a mail service operating on a twenty-four-hour schedule should bo given preference. Jjord Amulrec, who expressed' much sympathy with the opinion that the' development of efficient day and night air mail services was desirable, stated that proposals for extending the Eng-land-India service to Australia were being considered by Australia and by the (jroyernments of India and of the Straits Settlements.