LITTLE HOPE FOR MRS KEITH MILLER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19241, 1 December 1930, Page 7

LITTLE HOPE FOR MRS KEITH MILLER.

PREMONITION OF DEATH FELT BY AIRWOMAN. (United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) NEW YORK, November 29. Mrs Keith Miller is missing between the island of Cuba in the Carribean Sea and the mainland of America. On Friday she took off from Havana with the object of completing her return flight to New York, via Miami, Florida, but she has not arrived. An extensive search *has been made for her without success. Aviation experts believe that she is lost, for she took off against bad weather conditions and against the advice of other flyers. She admitted when she left that she was worried as her 'plane was without radio, bank indicator, or instruments for blind flying. She had a collapsible rubber boat but it is doubtful is she had the ability to use it. Practically all hope has been abandoned for her safety. Search parties in six ’planes from Havana and Miami having flown for hours over the gulf and Florida Keys without finding a trace of her. “Something Tells Me.” It is said that Mrs Miller had a premonition of a death which she thrust aside through fear of being thought a coward. Her friends in Havana accused themselves of not having prevented her forcibly, if necessary, from making the flight against which were the odds of a poorly conditioned ’plane, extremely rough weather, and the mental hazard of flying over water. “I dp not know why it is but something tells me I am going down,” she said before taking off. “I have had that feeling since I crossed from Florida. Somehow or other I cannot shake it off.” She called her ’plane an unairworthy crate, explaining that it was a conditionally >licensed ship which she had rescued from a junk pile and reconditioned. “I am trying to put myself over as a commercial pilot. If I make a flight like that in an old ship without usual equipment it ought to be easy to get some company interested in using me as a regular pilot,” she said. Lack of Instruments. Many in contact with her in Havana remarked at her preoccupation and her comments of not being able to eat or sleep properly. She said that what worried her most was the lack of blind flying instruments, or the turn and bank indicator. Mrs Miller said: “Frankly, I cannot afford one.” Referring to the latter instrument aviation officials returning from the search declared that not even a stout seaplane could have stayed afloat. She had a collapsible rubber boat but she had expressed doubt as to her ability to inflate it. Since coming to the United States from Australia three years ago, Mrs Miller has acted as demonstrator of small ’planes and amphibians and has been instrumental in popularising aviation among women. A message from Pittsburg states that Captain Lancaster, who accompanied Mrs Miller on her flight three years ago from London to Australia, said that he thought she had been forced down at sea. He expressed the fear that she must be afloat somewhere between Cuba and the Florida coast in the rubber boat which she carried. Backers of the flight expressed the hope that she might have landed somel where in Florida. A Ray of Hope. There is a possibility that Mrs Miller did not attempt to reach Miami. A Reporter of a Havana newspaper, in

a statement said that he saw the 'aviatrix and she told him that she would land at Miami if the weather was favourable, but otherwise would continue north as far as possible. She had fuel lor nine hours’ flight, and the distance across the gulf was not far. It is felt by some that she has reached the United States at a point where communication is difficult. Children Killed. Mr John Liggett, one of her backers, left by passenger ’plane to fly to Miami to assist in the search. When landing in the dusk on the ice of a small lake at Edmonton, the pilot, W. Sherlock, of Commercial Airways, swerved to avert running down some children who were playing, and the machine crashed into some gas drums, behind which seven others were playing, unseen. Four were killed and three seriously injured. The passengers and airman were severely shaken. The ’plane was wrecked.