ROUND THE WORLD BY AIR

Evening Star, Issue 17791, 13 October 1921, Page 5

ROUND THE WORLD BY AIR

AN AMERICAN SCHEME. American experts have just returned to New- York after discussing in Europe tho scheme, now taking definite shape, for an express “ airway ” which shall run completely round the world (says a London paper). Thousands of miles of it exists already, and are being flown over; and, when the A merican 100,000,000 dollar combine begins to get its groat passenger-carrying airships in service, it will be possible to put many thousands of miles more into regular operation. Night as well as day flying is to bo arranged for, and already lighthouses and special aerial beacons aro being installed along the great 3,000 miles transcontinental section between San Francisco and New York. Tho wide ocean stage between New York and London is to be conducted by vast airliners in the form of rigid-type airships far larger than any at present in use. These machines will carry in passengers and crow hundreds of people, and will do the non-stop ocean flight in about forty-eight hours. ACROSS EUROPE. Then, right on across Europe, there will be a series of 'inter-connecting aeroplane stages ; after which, at the groat air junction of Cairo, the trausworld airway will be continued by an express airship line which will run on via India to far Australia. Beyond this, across the Australasian islands, it is proposed—and Mr Hughes, the Prime Minister of Australia, is an enthusiastic advocate of tho scheme—that tho further links of the airway should bo by swift amphibious aeroplanes, capable of alighting either on water or land. These would speed from island to island in series of stages, tapping traffic as they wont; while tho big Pacific stretch, say from Honolulu to San Francisco—completing the world’s aerial chain—will according to American suggestions, be effected by means of extremely largo multi-engined flying boats, such as the U.S. authorities are now experimenting with, and on which they aro spending large sums of money. A REAL SHIP OF THE AIR. Thus the world air traveller may have plenty of variety in the matter of his aerial "craft—huge high-speed land planes; colossal airships which will take the form of luxurious hotels of the air; roomy “amphibians,” which will seem a combination of motor car, ship, and ’plane; and, fmallly, the great slim-hulled flying boat—the veritable ship of tho air. In each of these in turn will be whirl aboVo tho surface of tho globe, devouring miles in thousands by night and day, and giving tho world a new conception both of distance and of time.