AIR MAIL SERVICES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20716, 8 November 1930, Page 11

AIR MAIL SERVICES.

BRITAIN TO INDIA. NEED OF FAST AEROPLANES. A "REACTIONARY" POST OFFICE. [FROM our own correspondent.] LONDON, Oct. 3. "There is no technical reason why mails should not be flown to India in from 30 to 40 hours," declared Sir Samuel Hoarc, Air Minister in the late Government, speaking at the Bonar Law College, Ashridge, Buckinghamshire, the other day. "Already machines in actual use in the Air Force fly 180 miles an hour, and there is np reason why types of this kind should not be used for a mail scrvico " At the present time, said Sir Samuel, the British air lines were served by slow omnibus machines intended to carry both passengers and freight at a speed that averaged less than 100 miles an hour, and for journeys of not more than about 300 miles without the need of long stops and protracted refuelling. The result was that on tl)p service to India the pace was comparatively slow, the stops on the ground were comparatively long, there was no night flying, and the journey took a week. But no less important than hurrying up the aeroplanes would be the hurrying up of the General Post Office. "Up to the present the British Post Office has shown itself (o be the blackest reactionary in all matters concerned with tho air,' Sir Samuel declared. "Almost alone of the great countries of the world we have refused to have an air stamp, and even now, after several yqars of successful air communication, air pillar boxes are regarded as one of the rarest curiosities of the capital of the Empire. "In these last few years," Sir Samuel said, "I have looked down from an aeroplane, flying more than 100 miles an hour, upon Ford cars speeding over tho desert with Arab sheikhs as their drivers, and I have seen Afridis or Waziris motoring on the Rasmak road on the NorthWest Frontier of India as if it were the Watford by-pass." Almost at the same time that Liverpool was celebrating the anniversary of tho opening of the first railway in England, Sir Samuel was flying in a party gf sevep Moths—all of them privately owned, and piloted by young men who had iearned to fly in their own time, and with Mr. Winston Churchill in one of them to make a morning call upon Colonel Walter Guinness, his former colleague in Mr. Baldwin's Cabinet. "Wo (Jew in formation 70 or 80 miles, j landed safely upon one of Colonel Guinness' fields, and returned to our base at Sir Philip Sassoon's house at Lympne in time for luncheon. What more vivid contrast could thej'e be between the England of 1830, the year of the opening of our first railway, and the year IGSO, in which we are now living ? "It would be wise, in my opinion, for British shipping companies and British railways to make tho fullest possible use of the new means of transport that, regarded as supplementary to existing means of transport, may be invaluable to them in the future. The great Canadian railways are already absorbing air lines in their systems. It is unfortunate that up to the present British slipping lines and British railways have tak<yi so little interest in aviation."