MOSCOW TO KABUL BY AIR

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 3 January 1931, Page 9

MOSCOW TO KABUL BY AIR

as a means of communication is making steady and rapid progress in the Soviet' Union. On August 1 the new air line, Moscow-Taslikent, was initiated, tvnd it is now possible to fly the whole distance from Moscow to Kabul ,thc capital of Afghanistan, although as a matter of practice it cannot be said that the- Tashkent-Kabul air line invites the patronage of the casual tourist.

The 20 air lines now functioning in j the Soviet Union cover a distance of about .1(3,000 miles, and last year carried 11,470 passengers; by 1933, the magic last year of the pyatiletlca, or five-year-plan, it is expected that 300,000 passengers will travel over 145 lines, covering a distance of some 80.000 miles, according to the Moscow correspondent of the London “Observer.” No figures are given regarding the number of airplanes which are operating on these lines; but it is a fair assumption that, the number is increasing rapidly to conform with such ambitious plans of expansion. The pilots on the Soviet passenger airplanes have hitherto been reserve army officers; now special schools are being opened for civilian aviators.

Passenger aviation in Russia is under the general supervision of the Dobrolet, a publicly controlled company in which the shares arc mostly held by State trusts and similar organisations. A subsidy from the Government covers its losses. In the beginning imported machines were used on the lines of the Dobrolct; but now Russian airplanes of the tliree-motor type devised by the engineer Tupolev, and of the single-motor type invented by another engineer, Kalinin, are beginnnig to appear. The Dobrolct claims the remarkable record

Russia Has Big Ideas

of having functioned for seven years without an accident. Last year two accidents attended by fatalities occurred on'an independent Ukrainian line, which lias subsequently been taken over by the Dobrolct.

The routes now in operation in the Soviet Union fall into two main categories. The longest regular lines, the Moscow-Irkutsk (over 3000 miles) and the Moseow-Tashkent and Moscow-Tif-lis (each about 2000 miles) follow fairly closely some of the main railroad routes. At the same time a network of air lines in the Far North and in Central Asia serves as a useful substitute for railroads.

Irkutsk has air communication with Yakutsk, ISOO miles away, the capital of the vast sparsely populated section of Siberia known, as Yakutia, and there is a- 1200-mile air line, between Irkutsk and Boadibo, the centre of the Lena gold-mining region. A six-liour flight brings the traveller from. VerklmeUdinsk, a station on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, to Ulan-Bator (formerly Urga), the capital of Outer Mongolia, a region with which the Soviet Union maintains increasingly close political and economic relations.

Some of the wildest places in Tadjikistan and in Russian Central Asia have been made accessible through a number of air lines centring in Tashkent and Samarkand; and from several points on tlio Turksib Railroad actual or projected airlines point like arrows to the frontier of Western China. Air lines which are planned for the future will traverse the Far North of Siberia, bisect the vast steppes of Kazakstan, and make possible air communication between Moscow and such eastern outposts of Siberia as Sakhalin Island and Kamchatka.