POST WAR PLANE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 20, 2 November 1943, Page 2

POST WAR PLANE

NEW ERA EVIDENT CiIVILI'A N TR A NSPORT Further details about the post, war trans-Atlantic, airplane thai may take passengers to Europe in 10 hours for 100 dollars arc becoming available here, says a Washington newspaper. Airline officials are circumspect in their comment, but it is evident that with the cessation of hostilities a new era in civilian aerial transportation is: doing to dawn. One airline official here, who declined to be quoted direct, said; that a 150-passenger airliner would already be in service if the war had not intervened. Not Imaginative Monster Details of this model, and of the transportation revolution it is capable of creating by fast trips and speed in turn-round, reveal that aviation leaders are already talking in terms, far different from those that the man in the street has generally grasped. The proposed model would have four engines, and would be substantially smaller than the air monsters Henry J. Kaiser and other imaginative industrialists have visualised. It would have an over-all range, of 5000 miles, and a practical range fully loaded of 3600 milesWith a plane of this sort "stepping stone" islands and matters of sovereignty in air travel would almost disappear. Trips to London from New York would be direct, onehop affairs, and to Scandinavia would require only one stop. The plane could go fully loaded round the equator with only six stops. The same plane would reduce the 21 days carrying time by boat from New York to Buenos Aires, to about 40 hours. Most spectacular change would be the passenger carrying capacity of such a vehicle arising from its fast passage multiplied through the year. Plane versus Ship Taking a hypothetical case, the plane could make the round trip daily from New York to London in less than 20 hours carrying 150 passengers on the round trip. The Normandie would take 12 days for a round trip carrying about 5000 passengers. In 12 days the airplane would carry 1800 passengers. The airplane Avould cost about 1,500,000 dollars, it is estimated, compared with many times that amount for f the big passenger liner. According to tentative computations such an airplane, operating to hypothetical capacity through the year, could move 109.500 people back and forth across the Atlantic. Even the most enthusiastic aviation official does not believe, that half a dozen of the proposed, planes is apt to be operating at such a rate. But the figure is offered as an illustration of the effect speed will have in making the. airplane the' equal of the steamboat.