The Hawera Star. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1925. COMMERCIAL AVIATION.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 17 September 1925, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1925. COMMERCIAL AVIATION.

Delivered every evening by 6 o’clock -n Hawere, Manala, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga. Alton, Hurleyville, Pate*. Waverley. Mokoia, Whakamara, Ohangai, Meremere, Fraeer Road, an Ararat*.

Although the Dominion has its established Air Force, with a regular ’drome and annual refresher camps for its pilots, commercial flying has yet to make its appearance amongst us, and it is only in his long visions of the day when London may be as near as Sydney is now that the average New Zealander thinks of the air as a field of transport. It comes as something of a shock, then, to find that it is possible for the Londoner who wishes it to fly by recognised service through Paris, Vienna, Belgrade and Constantinople to Angora, the new Turkish capital in Asia Minor; or via Berlin, Danzig and Moscow to Kazan away back by the Ural Mountains; or up the Swedish coast to Stockholm and over to Leningrad. With a single interruption of about two hundred miles in the South of France, which must be covered by night train, one may fly from Casablanca, in French Morocco, to Moscow, the journey occupying three days, against a minimum of nine by any other means. Angora is within sixty hours of Paris. Some of these routes are purely political in nature, having little excuse for being except in providing easier transport of official* mails or passengers into distant dependencies, and many of the others make their principal appeal to tourists. But there is a definite and growing traffic in business passengers and in perishable and fragile merchandise, which is the point to be noted. These civil air services have got beyond the novelty stage. To what extent that is so may be gathered from the figures of Channel crossings, the Londion-Paris route having been officially open for .just six years. Up to .Tune 30 of this year 72,000 people had crossed the Channel by air, and the bookings for the earlier part of the current year suggest that the annual total, which has been steadily on the climb from the very beginning, will run close on 25,000. The public is becoming reconciled to travelling by air. Owing to the short distances between the main capitals and the speedy land communication, air mail services have not made much headway in Europe. It would not be,.possible to effect any appreciable saving of time without night flying, and this would mean the expense of running special mail ’planes, since passenger work by night is not feasible, under existing conditions. The mail service linking France with Morocco, however, beats the steamers badly and is rapidly growing in popularity. But for real evidence of what can be. done in the wav of flying mail over long distances it is necessary to turn to the United States. There, curiously enough, passenger and goods traffic are barely of sufficient volume to. notice; but at the end! of last month mail aeroplanes (operated directly by the Post Office Department) had flown a total of over ten million and carried some four thousand tons of mail matter. It is seven years since the first service was initiated, but its present strength is due to improvements of more recent, date, chief .of which is the lighting and equipping of the overland route for night flying practically as far as the foothills' of the Rockies. Those who have studied the prospects claim that aerial mailcarrying is more likely to be. successful over distances of at least five hundred miles, which gives America an immediate advantage in this branch of development. On the other hand, passenger service with aeroplanes of tlio existing type is considered to promise best on routes less than five hundred miles long, particularly if topographical or political obstacles kdep the means of ground transport relatively inefficient. Of such routes Europe has any number. If a reasonable load is to be carried, aeroplanes cannot be reckoned on, for greater spans than four hundred miles without refuelling. This means' that transoceanic journeys, or those across wide expanses of desert or jungle, must be undertaken by airships, which can be supplied to cruise five thousand miles. With the two types*of craft- in their present, stage of development, it would most probably be by airship that any air route to Australia would be pioneered, although the three parties which hove so far reached that, country from Asia have come one by aeroplane, one by seaplane and one by flying boat. When a service Home is available *from this part of the world, the first, consul drat ion to most of us will be the cost of passages. No figures are available for airships, but the minimum paying rate for owners of ’plane services works out at, about sevenpence half-penny a mile. That, would make the single, fare to Australia about £37 10s. The sea would be cheaper, if slower.