The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, AUGUST 27, 1923. INTERNATIONAL AIR CONFERENCE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 95, 27 August 1923, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, AUGUST 27, 1923. INTERNATIONAL AIR CONFERENCE.

Proceedings at the International Air Conference held recently In London were of a highly interesting nature and demonstrated the great advances that have been made in aviation. At one sitting of the Conference Major G. H. Scott, A.F.C., stated that air mails to India could be carried at a cost of 1.34 of a penny per letter. This statement drew from the director of the British postal service the remark that "under those conditions, the question of Imperial communications assumed an entirely different aspect." Major Scott was not speaking without experience of day and night travel by air, as he was introduced as one who had crossed the Atlantic twice by airship. The airship Major Scott advocated as suitable would ,have an air displacement of 150 tons The speed would be 80 miles per hour. She would carry 200 passengers and 11 tons of mail and freight on a nonstop flight of 2500 miles—the distance from England to Egypt, or Egypt to Bombay. The stages, Major Scott suggested, would show an average saving of GO per cent, over the present day steamship, and give the following figures:—Port Said 2 1 days; Bombay 5 days; Singapore 8 days; Australia (Perth) 11 days. Sir Samuel Hoaro, the Secretary of State for Air, told the Congress he recognised that the big question of airships was of particular interest to the Government In the poasible development in tho future of an air route to India and the Far East. lie was able to inform it that within the lost few days from when he was last speaking, in conjunction with the Postmaster-General ho had appointed a small Government Committee of Inquiry to see how far British air peats could be developed. As %ft evidence o? tfw

attention now being directed to the

air services it may be remembered that the question of a separate control of the naval air forces apart from the Admiralty recently almost precipitated a crisis. This has been tided over by compromise. Then ja few days after the Congress a splendid display of aeronautics took place in the presence of the King at Hendon. The great display there was witnessed by some 80,000 people with all gaioty and show of an Ascot week. Sir Samuel Hoare, discussing the pageant with a press representative, said: "The show we liave put up to-day could not have been carried out in any other country. It covered the whole field of training, What the public has seen today has not been simply star turns, but an example of the regular work of the Royal Air Force."