NEW AIR AGE DAWNS

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 20 February 1935, Page 6

NEW AIR AGE DAWNS

MACHINES CAREY 70 PEOPLE. IMPERIAL AIRWAYS LINER. (From Our Own Correspondent.) (By Air Mail.) LONDON, Jan. 26. The cables have no doubt spoken of the giant Imperial Airways liner which will carry 70 passengers. I am able to give further details of this air monster which shows that a new age in air travel is.dawning. The extent of the machine’s carrying capacity may be more readily grasped when it is stated that a London tramcar carries 68 passengers. Needless to say, construction on such a vessel is not to begin before technical certainty justifies'it, and great care has to be taken to ensure that the latest scientific knowledge is embodied. Otherwise a machine becomes obsolete in a year or two —a very unsatisfactory position for craft which should bo in regular service for six or! seven years. The old weight limit for land aeroplanes has, of course, been far surpassed, and big machines, over 30 tons in weight, are no longer held to be impracticable since new standards of reliability have been achieved with -the modern four-engined and six-engined craft. It is a fact of great significance that the operators of the leading countries are now able to go to work in the certainty that in the course of the next three or four years air passenger traffic will be heavy enough to justify the construction, at great cost, of huge machines which -would entail big operational loss if their cabins were not occupied on an average to at. least 60 per cent, of their capacity. The biggest air liners _at present range from about eight to 24 tons, fully loaded. The very big liners will not be the fastest, but a cruising speed of 140 m.p.h., and services operated, as they will be, by night as well as by day, will secure on long-distance routes a big saving t*f time.