AIR SERVICE FROM LONDON TO AUSTRALIA.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 77, 31 March 1931, Page 1

AIR SERVICE FROM LONDON TO AUSTRALIA.

SYDNEY, March 30. Imperial Airways, Limited, have cabled their Sydney agents intimating that experimental flights are being arranged to be made next month between London and Australia, with the object of ascertaining whether a regular air service between London and Port Darwin is practicable. Aeroplanes will leave London on April 4 and April 25. returning from Darwin seven days after arrival. Mails will probably be carried. As the logical conclusion of the policy of Imperial Airways a regular service to Australia completes their system. Already this year the company have opened a line of 6000 miles from Cairo to Cape Town reducing the time of the trip from London by thirteen days and the air route to Australia should reduce that trip by sixteen days. v Already there is a weekly service, in each direction, from London to Karachi and Delhi, via Paris. Marseilles, Cairo, Bagdad and Basra, and it is anticipated that a further four days, via Calcutta, Rangoon and Singapore, wil. complete the route to Darwin. Some delay has been caused by the necessity for the very thorough preparation of ground services, and in the negotiations with the Netherlands Government and the Royal Dutch Air Services. There were rumours in Australia last year that the Dutch company in-' tended to link up the gap between India and Australia, but apparcntl)' these have come to nothing.