CAPE AIR MAIL

Evening Star, Issue 21007, 22 January 1932, Page 9

CAPE AIR MAIL

LONGEST ROUTE IN THE WORLD FIRST PLANE TAKES OFF (British Official Wireleii.) press Asaociation-By Telegraph-Copyright. f RUGBY, January 20. Shortly after midday to-day one of the great fqur-engmed land planes of Imperial Airways took off from Croydon carrying bags of mails which will reach Cape Town, 8,000 miles distant, in eleven days. This inauguration of the Cape air mail marked a new and important stage in air communications, which have boen/steadily developed during the last eight years. The new route will not be open for regular passenger traffic until March, but Mr Francis Bertram, Deputy-Direc-tor of Civil Aviation, and Sir Wyell Vyvyan were travelling on the service to-day. The new route is the’longest organised air line in the world, and it means that difficulties have been overcome during its organisation through the length of Africa. Deserts and swamps in the north, rapids on the Nile, high altitudes, and high temperatures near the Equator, forest and bush country and liability to violent storms make this airway one of the most trying to prepare for commercial operation.