Children in the Air

Southland Times, Issue 22499, 8 December 1934, Page 21

Children in the Air

“There is no question, nowadays, about the young generation becoming ‘air-minded.’ Children take to flying just like ducks to water.” This remark was made by an Imperial Airways official recently' on the arrival of the air mail from Africa at the Croydon airport, when it was found that one of the passengers was a child of three years of age, who had flown from Salisbury, in Southern Rhodesia, to London, a distance of 6475 miles. “We are growing quite accustomed,” he added, “to seeing boys and girls of not more than six or seven alighting from machines which arrive from the Continent. Often children travel alone on one of these aerial journeys, being placed in charge of the airway staff and making their journeys in perfect comfort and safety. Not long ago there was the case of a baby boy, only six weeks old, who made a journey by air with his parents even before he had travelled by train. “Among children passengers are many flying to and from school, and, in addition to those travelling between London and the Continent, quite a number now make long distance journeys along our Empire routes. Boys or girls who are at school in England, and whose parents are at some point, perhaps thousands of miles away, which is served by one or other of the Empire air lines, can now fly home for the holidays in a matter of days, whereas by surface transport such a journey might take weeks, and—remembering that the trip both ways has to be taken into consideration—would often occupy so much time that it would be impracticable.”