AIR LINERS OF THE FUTURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3912, 5 March 1929, Page 68

AIR LINERS OF THE FUTURE.

PRESENT STAGE OF PROGRESS.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, January 10. Aircraft carrying 100 passengers and equipped with sleeping berths and kitchens were foreshadowed by Colonel I. A. E. Edwards when speaking in London on “ The Future of Commercial Aviation and Its Relation to Insurance.” He said there were already aircraft in construction designed to carry fifteen tons of pay-load, which would accommodate 60 passengers and a considerable quantity of freight. *’ These aircraft are not the ultimate goal aimed at,” he said. “ They merely, mark a stage in progress. If we could think forward, and visualise what could and would be done in the way of shortening the time which to-day separates the component parts of our Empire and apply the experience of the past to the future, the result would be amazing. For example, even with the aircraft of to-day, if air services, were established to connect England with the outlying portions of the Empire, we should find, in terms of time,

Australia approximately where Aden was; India superimposed on Egypt; South Africa just south of Gibraltar; and Canada just off the west coast of Ireland.”

The United States of America and Germany had realised more than any other nation the extent to which air services could benefit trade.

Since the commencement of British commercial aviation in 1919, there had been four accidents and 13 persons were killed. During that time approximately 7,000,000 miles were flown. Insurance rates were admittedly high, but that must be so long as the market for insurance was limited to its present dimensions. that high rates were not due to any danger, inherent in air transport was definitely proved by the fact that insurance rates for transport of goods by air were considerably lower than by any other means of transport. That, of course, was mainly attributable to the fact that in air transport less handling was involved, and consequently less risk of damage and smaller chance of pilfering. The solution of the insurance problem, he thought, would be found in the underwriters grouping themselves together as they had done in other directions.