TAXI-PLANES

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 127, 26 November 1945, Page 6

TAXI-PLANES

WAR PILOTS' PROSPECTS

O.C. SYDNEY, November 13. j Air-taxi services may expand rapidly because they are more convenient than private ownership of aeroplanes, Australian aviation authorities say.

Sir Keith Smith, co-pilot in the first England-Australia flight in 1919, and now Australian representative of Vickers, Ltd., lists a number of advantages for. air-taxis. "A business man who. intends to buy his own plane has to spend a lot of money,1' he said. "He must service it himself or hire a mechanic, he has to keep it in a hangar, and he has to arrange transport to and from the aerodrome. If he can call on an aircraft taxi service he can get all the speed his own plane could give him without the worry." Sir Keith said Air Force pilots had a better chance of being absorbed m internal services than in overseas airlines. Many pilots would receive employment by airline companies, but numbers of- them would need reschooling because airline operation called for a training different from that of a bomber or fighter pilot. There would be little opportunity for women pilots in Australian airlines, he added. In England women had done great work ferrying Spitfires and other warplanes, but he believed air passengers would feel " safer if they knew their pilot was a man. The secretary of the Royal Aero Club of New South Wales, Mr. Connors, said that a number of women were training and many of them hoped to become airline pilots, but he thought opportunities would be limited because thousands of Air Force pilots were available and the companies were likely to give them the The managing director of Adastra Airways, Ltd., Captain F. W. Follett, said air-taxis had a promising future. Before the war his company did a lot of taxi work, including flying specialist surgeons to operations and business men to distant appointments.