TWO MORE FLIGHTS

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 24 July 1935, Page 10

TWO MORE FLIGHTS

OFFICE CHAIR FOR “SMITHY” TIRED OF LONG DISTANCE TRIPS GOODWILL VENTURE TO JAPAN. Two more flights and Sir Charles Kingsford Smith will desert for ever the ranks of long-distance airmen. The first will be a flight from England to Australia in the Lady .Southern Cross in October, and the second a goodwill flight from Australia to Japan on behalf of the Commonwealth Government in January. “I do not intend giving up flying,” said Sir Charles on arrival in Wellington from Auckland in an Air Force machine yesterday afternoon, “but 1 am rather tired of long-distance flights. I have now reached my 39th year and I am to control all my aviation activities from an office chair.” After the conclusion of his transTasman service negotiations in New Zealand, Sir Charles will go on to the United States and Great Britain, studying the latest aviation developments, Including ground organisation, direction-finding and radio equipment. After about three weeks in England, he will fly the Lady Southern Cross to Australia. “It is not my intention to break the record from England to Australia, but I certainly will be in a hurrv to get back,” he explained. ' Probably Mr J. T. Pethybridge, who recently passed through Wellington on his way to America and England, will ■'accompany Sir Charles on this flight, and Mr B. Shiel, who is with Sir Charles at present, will be his companion on the trip to Japan.