AIR TRAVEL

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 23 February 1929, Page 9

AIR TRAVEL

JT is possible to-doay to start from "New York and travel over regular airlines to Washington, to the Pacific Coast, and to Montreal. Within a few months it will be possible to leave the airport at Newark which, until Floyd Bennett Field ha!» been finished, will be the air terminal for New York, and tarvel by ’plane south to .Cuba, Central America, and South America, west to Chicago, and thence to Seattle and coastal points from Victoria and Vancouver to Lo s Angeles, writes Lauren .D. Lyman in the “Now York Times.”

The machinery for passenger convenience, ticket offices where, reservations can be purchased for existing air-lines, bus and auto transportation to Newark'Airport, and for hotels that cater to the air traveller and the pilot, is already in existence, and functioning. If one does not care to ’make all his journey by air it is possible now to take connecting trains from the Pennsylvania and Grand Central Stations, where the ticket offices will reserve aeroplane accommodations at Cleveland, Chicago, or Miami for further travel bv air.

AIRPORT PROBLEM. Airports for the United States to-day cannot yet be included under the term “machinery for passenger convenience.” With few exceptions municipal airports for the larger cities are located miles from the centres. The problem, of course, is great, and the difficulties facing airport committees and commissions in congested areas seem to him for the present insurmountable. Airports now are for the most part, on the outskirts of the larger cities, and it. often takes an air passenger as long to go to and from the airports at the start and end of his flight as his actual time in the air amounts to. These conditions, arc being remedied in part by express bus and automobile services between hotels and airport, but too frequently a passenger is set down on some wind-blown field to shift for himself. Two ‘passenger lines operate from the Newark airport now. A line to Washington runs when the service is required. WONDERFUL SCENERY.

For Montreal the mail and passenger ’planes leave daily, except. Sunday, connecting with ’planes for Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Cleveland at the Albany airport. The passenger leaving Newark Airport in a closed Fairchild ’plane at 7 o’clock in the morning arrives in Albany at 8.30 a.m. after enjoying some of the most beautiful scenery the country can offer. The ride up the Valley of the Hudson, the ’plane skimming along below the level of the highest peaks in the Catskills, is something to be remembered. After a fifteen-minute stop at the Albany airport the ’plane continues to Montreal, flying across lakes and for-est-clad hills, rolling farming country, and busy towns, into the St. Lawrence

ELABORATE SYSTEM

SERVICES IN AMERICA

Valley, to alight four hours and fifteen minutes after leaving Newark at the .municipal airport of Montreal, across the river from that city. The trip to Montreal costs 50 dollars, and to Albany, from New York, 35 dollars. For westbound travellers from New York there is a wait in Albany -of a little more than an hour before the ’plane for Cleveland leaves with mail, express and passengers. Following the “water level route” taken by the State Barge Canal, the passenger’travelling westward flies over the fertile Hohauvk Valley at more than twice the speed of the crack railway limited, lie stops long enough at the cities along the route to stretch his legs and get a cup of coffee at the little restaurants now springing up at many of the airports, and arrives in -Cleveland at 4.15 p.m., nine hours and fifteen minutes after leaving Newark. The roughest part of his "trip is -over. By going north to Albany he has avoided the I Aileghanies and the hazards of those mountains and the forests, and lie is within three hours of Chicago by air and has only a fifteen, minute wait at Cleveland for the Chicaso ’plane.

It is all smooth flying—if the weather is good—from Cleveland to Chicago. The ’plane hums along over the level cornlands of Ohio with the clip into Indiana until th e smoke of Chicago, ■sometimes, made more “soupy” by a fog from Lake Michigan, looms ahead. It is not always easy to discern the Chicago airport from the air, but if worst comes to worst there are plenty of fiat meadows outside the city where emergency landings can be made. Assuming, however, that the ’plane goes through on the schedule, which it does '99 per cent, of the time, it will land at, the airport near Sixty-third. Street and Cicero at 6.15 p.m.. Central Time, setting the passenger from New York down seven or more hours ahead of the fastest train schedule.

COST TO THE COAST. Now comes the longest, wait of the westward air voyage, an hour and thirty-five minutes, time for an unhurried meal, at least, before the Boeing ’plane takes off for the Coast. Apassenger’s ticket so far has cost him 130 dollars. It costs 200 dollars to fly from Chicago to San Francisco and 206 dollars from Chicago to Los Angeles. The air-line distance to San Francisco is 3 943 miles, the first part over the gradually rising plain that stretches to the Rockies is flown in darkness. However, beacons glow every ten miles of the night trip to keep the pilot on his course, and emergency landing fields abound on every farm and ranch. The first stop of importance is Omaha, where a landing is made at 12.20 a.m., Central Time. There is time for the lunch with coffee that the transcontinental line operators furnish the regular passenger service Then the ’plane climbs into

the (night {for 'th<j next leg, North Platte, Nob., and thence hurries on to Cheyenne, Wyo., the first really high altitude field of the journey. Here dawn catches up with the speeding mail and passenger and.it is 4.45 a.m. ‘Mountain Time when the Boeing takes off for Salt Lake. Daylight finds the ’plane 8000 or 10,000 feet up dodging mountain peaks and. slipping through the passes of the Rockies. The mail load is likely to be lighter, for Cheyenne is a junction point on the air passenger mail and express lines. A branch extends from this mountain city to Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo, where passengers tired of air travel ean change ■to the scenic-route, rail limiteds that wind through the mountains by the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas and the Royal Gorge to Salt Lake City, taking about twenty-seven hours for a trip for whic-'h the plane needs less than five.

The airport at Salt Lake is not far from the centre of the city_ It is a broad and level stretch to the south, close to the shores of the Great Salt Lake and near the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad. It is a busy airport, the junction point of-two great feeder systems from the Southwest and Northwest. Here there flies from Pasc-o, Wash., the mail plane that follows the old Oregon Trail down through Idaho 'connecting the Northwest with the trans-continental line. Passengers are carried by special arrangement on this route, but plans are afoot to equip the system with tri-motored planes and to extend the line to Portland and Seattle.

THE COURSE FROM SALT LAKE. The Los Angeles mail and passenger plane leaves Salt Lake after the arrival of the transcontinental from Chicago. From Salt Lake the pilot lays lii« course through dry country and desert southwest across Utah into Nevada, passing close to the entrance to Death Valley, the hottest place in the world in the summer Vegas, X.M., and then still over desert country the plane flies into Arizona and turns westward aiming for the pass through the San Bernardino mountains to Los Angeles to land there at 5.25 p.m., Pacific Time, about twenty-four hours from Chicago and a little more than thirty-three hours from New York. For San Francisco, the Pacific, terminal of the transcontinental line,' pas-, sengers and mail take off from Salt Lake City direct for San Francisco, with stops at Elko and Reno, Xcv.. and an arrival at the Oakland Airport at 4.30 p.m_ Pacific Time. From San Francisco several passenger lines go north and south along the Coast; north .as far as Seattle where, shortly, connections can bo made with an International Lino into the Canadian Northwest > and south by several passenger lines employing multi-motored planes to Los Angeles, San Diego and other Californian cities.