LONDON TO THE CAPE AIR SERVICE IN MAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19270, 6 January 1931, Page 1

LONDON TO THE CAPE AIR SERVICE IN MAY.

FIRST SECTION WILL BE READY IN MARCH NEXT. (United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) RUGBY, January 3. Imperial Airways announces that a distance of 2670 miles of the North Africa section of the London to Cape Town air route will be opened on March 5 with an inaugural flight from Cairo to Mwanza, Tanganyika Territory. The through flight from London to Mwanza, a distance of 5100 miles, will take nine days, against twenty-four days by surface transport. The North Africa section between Cairo and Khartoum will be operated by the Armstrong-Siddeley Argosy machines, and Short Calcutta flying boats will be used on the route to Kisumu and Mwanza along the Nile and over the African lakes. It is hoped that by May, 1931, the service over the full 8000 miles from London to Cape Town will be in operation, bringing London within eleven days of Cape Town. The Cairo-Cape air service is heralded by commercial air circles as an outstanding enterprise. Linking with the Indian air mail service, it will reduce the transit time between London and Cape Town to eleven days. The ground organisation along the route, which measures 5 700 miles, is being developed rapidly. It involves the establishment of twenty-seven air stations with hangars, wireless, weather offices, staff quarters, and in some case*; hotels. There are also thirty intermediate landing grounds, while a fleet of motor-boat tenders has been secured for service on the Nile.