NEW FLYING BOATS

Southland Times, Issue 22813, 12 February 1936, Page 3

NEW FLYING BOATS

EFFICIENT MACHINES. DEVELOPMENT OF AIR TRANSPORT. In readiness for the tremendous expansion of traffic which must follow transference of all first-class mail to the air, Imperial Airways have placed considerable orders for new large airliners. Twenty-nine big monoplane flying boats and twelve big land monoplanes are concerned in orders placed with two leading British constructors. Seaplanes and landplanes will reach new levels of performance, efficiency and comfort. They are designed for the operation of day and night services, with arrangements for rapid conversion to sleeping berths of the daytime accommodation. Fully laden, each flying boat will weigh more than 17 tons, yet its normal and economical cruising speed will be not less than 150 miles an hour and its maximum attainable level speed in the neighbourhood of 200 miles an hour. The new big landplanes will be at least equally fast. Still-air range of the flying boat on full fuel tanks will be some 1500 miles—sufficient to provide a regular service over the longest stages that must be flown on an Empire service extending as far as New Zealand. While Britain marches steadily forward on a path of purposeful development of Empire routes to the East, she is not neglecting the immense potentialities of aerial services westward to the United States. Across the North Atlantic Ocean, most formidable of waters to the airman, lies potentially the most valuable of all air routes. Perhaps the chief event in civil aviation during 1935 has been the conclusion of satisfactory preliminary negotiations between Great Britain, the United States, the Irish Free State and Canada on the organization of regular air services between London, New York and Montreal. Experimental flights are scheduled for the summer and autumn of 1936. Engaged in them will be American flying boats similar to craft which operate services in the Pacific, one of the new Empire boats now building for Imperial Airways modified to carry an extra fuel load, and the novel “composite aircraft” made up of a very heavily laden seaplane that is launched in mid-air from the platform afforded by the wings and fuselage of a large flying boat. Four round trips a week are promised once the regular service is opened.