AERIAL RECORD SET UP

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 661, 14 January 1933, Page 1

AERIAL RECORD SET UP

World’s Largest Planes’ Fine Performance. British Official Wireless. RUGBY, January 12. A fleet of four Handley-Page biplanes, type 42, which are the largest air liners yet commissioned by any transport company, have established a record in regular day by day operation in the cross-Channel service conducted by Imperial Airways. Throughout the winter and summer months these giant craft, driven toy four 550-h.p. Jupiter air-cooled motors, make the London-Paris journey with clockwork precision. The four ’planes between them have flown the equivalent of 400,000 miles and have carried altogether 47,300 passengers. During the summer months each machine carried a daily average of fifty-five passengers. Imperial Airways London to Cape Town air route, which was established less than a year ago, is also being operated with remarkable success, traffic having increased nearly 50 per cent in the past three months. Such is the demand for short trip accommodation on the Alexandria-Cape Town sections that a new fleet of machines is being completed. One of these twenty-two-seaters is on its way to Cape Town with Sir Eric Geddes, chairman of Imperial Airways.