BRITISH AIR MAIL SERVICES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19946, 2 November 1934, Page 11

BRITISH AIR MAIL SERVICES

KEEPING STEP WITH NEW DEVELOPMENTS

British Official Wireless

RUGBY, October 31

A scheme for the further development of British commercial air transport, upon the plans for which the Air Ministry, in conjunction with the Post Office and Imperial Airways, have been actively engaged for several months, will, it is hoped, be revealed within the next month or two. This announcement was made by Sir Philip Sassoon, Under-Secretary for Air. who has just returned from a 19,000 miles flight over 14 countries. He is convinced that civil air transport must, in the not far distant future, tend increasingly to supplement the older forms of transport. He expressed satisfaction that the air race had been won by a British machine, with British engines, and paid a tribute to the excellent performance of the Douglas machine, flown by very able Dutch pilots, but he did not think they would claim that the time had yet arrived when it was possible to contemplate a speed of 2CO miles an hour on a regular schedule flown in all weathers and at all times of the year. The lessons of the race were apparent, but he did not wish it to be thought that any special action on the part of the Air Ministry was attendant on the results of even such an event. Referring to the work on plans for ordered development, which had been proceeding at the Air Ministry, he said they had reached the conclusion that the present flying times between London and other Empire capitals must be progressively and drastically curtailed, and that measures must be taken for the further development of air mail traffic in particular. England to Australia Service. An Imperial Airways air liner left Croydon for Australia for the Duke of Gloucester’s opening of the EnglandAustralia air mail. The machine averaged 160 miles an hour on the journey to Paris.

It is piloted by Captain Prendergast, the first officer is Mr Creates.