TRAVEL BY AEROPLANE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9619, 27 March 1917, Page 2

TRAVEL BY AEROPLANE

ROUND-THE-WORLD TRIPS WHAT MAY COME AFTER WAR IS OVER. There is at least one reason why I want the war to end before I reach the bed-ridden stage of existence, writes ‘‘A Middle-aged Man” in thdgLondou “Daily Express." I look forward to the time when I shall be able (o own an aeroplane and fly to and from my home, my work, and my favourite haunts in the country or beside the sea. Hero, spade in hand, I dig over nty potato patch, while overhead the young men of the Flying Corps chase each other like swallows, or soar like skylarks until 10,000 square miles of country are spread out in their sight, and the waters of tho Channel, forty miles away, sparkle for them in the sunshine. It is chiefly, however, as a means of daily locomotion that the aeroplane of 1925 or thereabouts captivates my imagination. By that time, it may be hoped, tho aeroplane will be as easily within the reach of the average man as the small motor-car is to-day, or would be but for war restrictions. When tho war is over there will be thousands of men who will know how to fly, and will regard the aeroplane as the normal means-of-locomotion. They will want private machines.,of their own, and the factories' which have grown up during the war "will be'ready to supply them. ' PLANES TOR THE* MILLION." I cuppose that.'the story of the cheap American car has not been lost on Bri; tisir'manufactirrat'S,' and if it lias "not »-e tsbail, as soon jus the war is done with, have' some aeroplane -firm laying down plant to turn out aeroplanes by the thousand—«t—the—lowest— possible-price: If an aeroplane to-day costa what a motor-car cost ten years' ago,, it- is to be expected that . when. output is arranged on the ' right scale ' the £IOO or JCISO flying machine will be as common as the ch.eajnnimcric.B.a.-car to-day..... Side by side with the cheap aeroplane, to bo sold in ten thousands, there will bo tho larger, more expensive air-cars, .which will in the future take, the place of—or supplement tile' 'indtor-omjiibiiseß which before tho war linked the villages of the' countryside. Those will fly at regular times ,on-fixed journeys, and the man who cannot afford his own aeroplane will take a season ticket on one of tho public arrears, which will cany eight or ten passengers each. Besides the private aeroplanes and tho air-omnibuses, there will be aeroplanes on hire in every town.,, and the...man. in ..a-'.-hu-rry . wgo wants to keep an appointment 100 or 200 miles away will telephone for a flying machine. ' • ’'■ V . - ~ , Thus we shall have flown into the Aeroplane Age, and we shall see a, revolution 1 in travel much greater than tho revolution which has been -wrought bv the motor-car. While the motor-car must keep to the road and be' content with. its. twenty, thirty, <ir forty miles an hour, our aeroplanes will make a hee-lino through the -air -at the -rate_ of eighty, 100 or 130 miles an hour. The express train will easily be eclipsed by the air machine, for who will spend two.hours In n train going from London to Birmingham when- he can get thorn in an hour by an air-omnibus? Who will live in a Balham villa when he can reach town as quickly from a. Berkshire cottage. where he may "keep pigs and live pretty"? Who will not prefer the Southern Swallow,- with its half-hour skim to Brighton*, even to the luxury ot the Southern. Belief. LANDING STAGES.

It will, of course, be necessary to establish landing places in all larfie towns or on their immediate °utebirts. in Eondon .the grounds of the White City might be cleared for an air station, and similar stations might lie opened at convenient points on other tube lines, ins business man coming to town from a distance of eighty or 100 miles will thus land beside a tube tram 1 , which would take him to his office in a few mnlutea At night .fixed or revolving lights, placed oh small Eiffel towers at intervals acrost, country will make aeroplane travel in tho-dark a practical proposition, and the aeroplanes, carrying : starboard and port lights, will keep clear: of each other as easily as tugs on the Thames. Holiday travel will be completely transformed; The Cook’s tour a'few years hence will bo made by air instead of by land and sea. All Europe will be within the radge of a'fortnights flight Wo shall come down in a little town among the Carpathian Mountains lor lunch look in at Moscow for a couple of .days, take a turn over the Balkans, have tea at Constantinople, and coine back 'over'"the top of the Alps, instead of burrowing beneath them in a railway train. Every seaside town will have its flying coaches, and people at Brighton or Hastings will make up parties for a day over the Channel, giving them "seven hours at Trouville" and bo back for an early dinner. For those with longer purses and more leisure all Asia —India, China. Japan—will be merely stages in a holiday in the air-, and sooner or lator the Atlantic will he .bridged.. .