FLYING MAIL TRAINS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20263, 24 May 1929, Page 14

FLYING MAIL TRAINS.

DELIVERY OF LETTERS. CABINS FOR LETTER-SORTERS. A question to which exports arc devoting themselves concerns the rapid delivery of airborne letters at intermediate points along trunk routes. A method is to be tested by the French authorities whereby largo mail-planes aic to be fitted with cabins in which lettersorters will travel. These experts will, as they fly, sort out letters {or destinations ahead: Then the various packets will be placed in bags attached to postal parachutes of a special type. As the mailplano rushes above the aerodrome on the outskirts of any town the bag of letters, suspended beneath the parachute, will be sent floating earthward. Another plan is 011 the point of being tried in Germany. This involves the employment of a "flying train." A powerful aeroplane of special design forms the engine. Behind it will bo towed motorless winged machines, like the mailvans of a postal train. In the plane jn front will bo a pilot and engineer, while the tenders towed behind may cither be pilotless or may have a man in each of them to control them. If the big winged engine in front is towing a string of pilotless gliders, and if it is desired to detach one of them at any given point, the pilot in the machine ahead will fly low over the aerodrome indicated. Whereupon his assistant, by the operation of a simple device, will uncouple the glider which is to be landed.