AIR TRAVEL

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 48, 26 February 1938, Page 8

AIR TRAVEL

FORECAST OF FUTURE

EXPRESS SERVICES

ALL CORNERS OF. THE EARTH

A forecast of exprciiH air services which might brinK Soul.li Africa within one day and Aimlrallu within two days of England was included in a paper on world air roul.es which was read before the Royal Society of Arts by Mr. C. J. Galpin, Director of Oversea Civil Aviation (slates the London "Times"). He also indicated some of the new world air routes which might be operated, and spoke of the need of co-operation among people- now competing on the main aic routes.

Mr. Galpin said the establishment of the world air route across the Atlantic, the bridge which was lo link the most active civilisations the world had yet seen, was now being accomplished. The achievements of the pioneers were being adapted to general use by the creation at the hands of engineers of forms of equipment in which the journey across the ocean could be made with those reasonable margins of safety and regularity which ordinary men and women required. It would be a bold man who would say that reliability on that route, almost up to the standard of the railway, was an impracticable ideal. The journey from London to New. York by the Queen Mary was scheduled to take just under five days; the air service running even at present speeds would need less than a day and a half, and that was only the beginning of development. PACIFIC ROUTE. It could not be long before American activity in the Pacific towards New Zealand would provoke a response. Discussions were already on foot between the British Governments concerned with a view to co-operation in the exploitation of that route. The interesting point about- that route was the sudden emergence •of certain hitherto unwanted little islands into value and prominence. Those islets, which were in effect little more than lagoons surrounded by a ring of coral on which the sparse earth had accumulated, giving rise to low forms of vegetation, formed admirable sheltered alighting places for liying-boats. In some cases the lagoons were nine or ten miles in diameter, marshy in parts, but in others sufficiently deep for navigation. Submerged coral heads had to be dynamited out of the way, but after a cleaning-up process, which might, of course, prove expensive, a* South Sea coral island could become a satisfactory and hospitable airport.

There were several new routes which might come to be employed. One was the interesting northwards Pacific route from Canada across to Russia by way of Alaska and Siberia. Although there might be certain political difficulties the route was straightforward and was in fact already complete except for two short lengths. There was the ambitious project for linking Russia direct with Canada and the United States across the Polar regions. The recent disaster to the third Russian flight along that route had not diverted the Russians and a special commission had just been established to prepare a programme of experiments; for this, year. There was also'the project of a route from Australia to Africa, passing through the Keeling Islands and the Seychelles and joining up at Mombasa with the routes running north and west. That suggestion, which was actively sponsored in Australia, appeared somewhat premature since there would hardly be sufficient traffic to justify a route so unremunerative along > its course while the better established service was running round the northern shores of the Indian Ocean. EXPRESS SYSTEM. It was reasonable to expect that the results of successfully bridging the 2000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean would be capable of application elsewhere. It was not too wild a dream to suppose that on the present system of routes which formed what might be called the ordinary service there might be superimposed an express service, operating at, say, 300 miles an hour and employing its ■ aircraft economically over single flights of 1700 to 2500 miles. It would then be practicable to lay out an express system of long hops in a kind of world network, binding the whole of the traffic system together by great junction alighting places specially designed for the purposes of long-distance aircraft. This would mean that from England, South Africa might be reachced in about a day, Australia in two days, New York in 12 hours, and South America in less than 24 hours. From the big junctions would radiate slower services operating in smaller hops so that no place would be farther from a junction than 1200 miles, or eight to ten hours' flying.

No one who viewed with enthusiasm the prospect of a world-wide system of air routes could help feeling that an essential condition of its realisation was a larger measure of co-operation between people who were now competing. If was true that he who laid down the ground organisation necessary for a world route ' must allow others to use it at a rental which would never repay him his capital, but the policy of throwing open facilities for the use of others reaped reciprocal benefits, and the" time might soon come when the principle of the freedom of the air would be found worth while not only politically but also commercially. In a form of transport so essentially and naturally international as flying, international advantages must eventually prevail over those which were purely national. While he would not advocate the ideal of a world-wide, regimented uniformity, they would all welcome the advent of an active and vigorous corporate system, the "jtiaiHies of which should be rivalry without enmity and combination without complacency.