GERMAN PLAN

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 227, 23 August 1928, Page 7

GERMAN PLAN

AIRLINES ACROSS ENGLAND.

“HUMILIATING AND ALARMING”

COMMENT OF NEWSPAPER,

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) (Australian Press Association.) LONDON, Aug. 21.

A German plan to establish airlines from Ireland to the Continent across the heart of England is revealed by the Daily Express newspaper. The J linkers firm proposes to run passenger aeroplanes from Queenstown, via Dublin, Liverpool and Hull. Trans-Atlantic passengers will be lucked up at Queenstown and raced to Hull, where seaplanes will carry them across the North Sea to Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, thereby saving from thirty-six to thirty-eight hours. There will be a connecting airline from' Hull to London, linking up with the present Paris-Berlin-Vienna service.

It is expected that the time between Dublin and London will also be reduced from twelve to three hours.

It is stated that the idea was originally submitted to Imperial Airways and rejected. Then the Junkers firm enthusiastically took it up. The Daily Express’s aviation expert points out that Germany at present operating 14,500 miles of European air routes, France 8800, and Britain 1000 miles. Germany’s 160 airlines fly 40,000 miles; Britain’s twentyone lines fly 3000 miles. The Express editorially describes this as humiliating and alarming, and the British record as a disgrace. The newspaper goes on to state: “Are we to witness the staggering spectacle of German aircraft flying regularly across England ? Neither self-respect nor common-sense can allow it.”

Captain F. E. Guest, Liberal member for Bristol N. (Secretary of State for Air in 1921-22) states that unless England is careful the airway to the Cape, the most valuable within the Empire, will also be captured by foreigners.