CONDUCTED SKY TOURS

Waikato Times, Volume 111, Issue 18639, 18 May 1932, Page 3

CONDUCTED SKY TOURS

FIRST OF THEIR KIND. A NOVELTY IN MODERN TRAVEL. GREAT POSSIBILITIES. (From a Correspondent.) Forty years' progress in organised travel will be epitomised when, this summer, for the first time, specially escorted parties of tourists, accompanied by couriers who will point out to them tlie landmarks below, will ascc’/t from London and 11 y out far across Europe in the 38-passenger airliners of Imperial Airways. These escorted continental air tours will strike an entirely new note in modern travel, and are expected to pave the way for still longer excursions hi which travellers in parties will not only ily high above Europe, bul will I>o able, thanks to the speed of the airway, to obtain in not more than a few days fascinating bird's eye views along the great Empire air-lines leading In India and Africa. In a three week's air trio one could nut

only fly to the heart of Africa and back, but could have a week there viewing the wonders of wild life. It is a new vista in organised travel that Is now opened up, Blazing New Tralla. It was as far back as 1889 that the Polytechnic Touring Association, who are now blazing new trails with these highspeed excursions by air, took a small party of schoolboys across the channel on a first organised conducted tour; and from that modest beginning has grown a travel organisation which Is now tho largest of its kind in !ho ( world, having ramifications which spread in all directions. j What the- “magic carpet” of the j airway, attaining more than twice the speed of surface travel, now renders possible in pleasure travel, may he illustrated from ttie lightning itinerary of a conducted party en route fur Switzerland. After breakfasting in London, xthey will motor with their guides to tlie London airport, eru- ! barking here In one of the four-en- j glued J3-ton aircraft which has saloons j as large, and as luxuriously equipped, i as those of a railway Pultuian-eur, j and which carries two uniformed! stewards to serve meals nr light re- i freshmen's while in Might. Thanks) also In (lie sound-deadening sysli.-ni employed In these latest wdndcrcraft, I

| noise has been so reduced that conversation without raising one's voice is now easily possible in the saloons; while the great 2200 horse-power machines fly smoothly even through gales of wind. Such is the -swiftness of this modern luxury air travel that, after one's | morning start from London, either Lucerne or Lugano are reached that samo evening in ample time for dinner, thus obviating any question of the fatigue for night travel. And during one’s flight to Paris and onwards to Switzerland, one has looked down upon wonderful panoramas from the windows of the ntr-salOon. At every point of the airway journey also, just as In a surface tour, the parly will have expert attendants at their service. Pleasure Almost Illlmltablo. When, in addition to all this, it is mentioned that these super-swift sky tours, permitting as they do so much longer for sightseeing at the cities visited, can now be provided at rates lower than those fur first-class surface travel, the immense potentialities of the airway become readily apparent. Passing with equal freedom above land or sea. and reducing Journeys of weeks to days, it offers a pathway to pleasures almost illimitable.