NEW AIRLINER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23883, 10 August 1939, Page 11

NEW AIRLINER

BRITISH EXPERIMENT SUB-STRATOSPHERE FLIGHT LONDON, Aug. 2. An airliner which will carry 24 passengers in a high standard of comfort- at over four miles a minute non-stop for 3000 miles in the substratosphere, is one of three 32-ton landplanes . entering experimental service on the British world routes next year. Short Brothers, at Rochester, are now developing three monoplane designs, provisionally known by the Air Ministry's specification number "14/38." They are externally similar, but two will have a maximum cruising speed of 250 miles an hour at 10,000 feet, and the third is intended for the sub-stratosphere. It will have a cruising speed of 2V5 miles an hour at a height of 25,000 feet maximum, and will be fourengined. Night fliers will be accommodated in four-passenger compartments. The aeroplane is equipped with a buffet, lounge, and promenade deck. The passengers in the sub-strato-sphere model occupy the "pressurised " fuselage, where air is supplied through superchargers. It will maintain an internal atmosphere comparable with that at sea level. The airliners carry a crew of seven, for whom comfortable quarters abaft the pilots' seats are provided, and also a rest corner when they are off duty.