AIR SERVICES

Evening Star, Issue 19021, 17 August 1925, Page 5

AIR SERVICES

SUEZ TO KARACHI GOVERNMENT SUBSIDY. Presi Association—By Telegraph—Copyright, LONDON, August 14. (Received August 17, at 8 a.m.) The ‘ Daily Telegraph ’ states that the Air Ministry has come to an agreement with the Imperial Airways, Ltd., to operate a service between Kanclara (Suez Canal) and Karachi (India), a distance of 2,450 miles. The agreement provides for a weekly service both ways via .Bagdad, Basra, Bushire, and Bandar Abbas. The section will be ilown in 2.) days, thus shortening the journey from London to India by six days, without night flying. The company is to receive a subsidy of £87,000 for five years, the Air Ministry providing certain aerodrome facilities. The new service begins in the spring and represents the most important advance since civil flying began. It is hoped to enable the Imperial Service to become self-supporting at the cud of five years.—A. and N.’Z. Cable. IMPERIAL AIRWAYS. The British Government has approved in principle tho institution of o. civil air service between Egypt and Lidia,, and it is hoped that the service, which is to have tho assistance of a subsidy, will bo started in the coming winter. The scheme is of immense interest as the largest effort .that has as yet been made in aeroplane development, says ‘The Times.’ It is tho first opportunity that British air transport has ever had of establishing a remunerative line over an area where the existing means of ground transport arc nob highly developed. The routo of about 2,500 miles, which will probably he the same as that followed by Squad-ron-leader MacLaren in his flight to India, will bo the first to bo exploited of a length sufficient to enable tho marked superiority of air transport in point of speed over other methods of travel to he conclusively demonstrated. If it can he shown within a reasonably short period to be financially remunerative to tho operating company a great stimulus will lie given to the further development of air routes over fca areas, such as Africa, where the system of ground transport is badly developed. For the bulk of long-distance travel the airship will still remain potentially the most suitable vehicle. But that does not mean that there are any grounds for the common error of supposing that aeroplane and airship services are in any way competitive. They are, on the contrary, complementary, and the one will feed the other, just as the mail steamers will link up at Suez with the Kandara-Karachi line of aeroplanes. The immediate effect of the institution of the service will ho a saving of from five to seven days in the carriage of mails and passengers between England and India, and with the coming of night flying, which is now only an affair of time, tho gain will he considerably greater.