AUSTRALIAN AVIATION

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 139, 9 December 1929, Page 10

AUSTRALIAN AVIATION

LINKING UP CAPITALS

DAILY SERVICES START WITH

NEW YEAR

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, 28th November.

The establishment on Ist January of tho Sydney-Brisbane air service by Australian National Airways, founded by Squadron-Leader Kingsfqrd Smith and Flight-Lieutenant Ulin, promises to

mark the dawn of a new era iv commercial aviation in the Commonwealth, for the next step, about March or April of the new year, will bo the inauguration of an all-night airway service between Sydney and Melbourne.

Kight flying ia not, of course, a novalty in America and on the Continent, but to annihilate space between those two cities in the blackness of night and in the air at anything up to 100 miles an hour will be a new experience for the average Australian. With huge floodlights playing on the taking-off and landing aerodromes in Melbourne and in Sydney, and with, at thirty-mile or so intervals, great beacons illuminating the sky and the earth for a distance of about seventy miles, all-night flying ought to be as safe as it is humanly possible to make it. Carrying the usual navigation lights, and with the comfortable passenger cabin also lighted, these great air liners will be as ships of the night. A 'plane will leave Mascot, Sydney, about midnight, and, on a non-stop flight, land at Melbourne about 5 a.m. With brief stops at Canberra and another airport the journey will take slightly longer, of course. Even if the man in the cockpit is warned en route that one of the beacon lights has suddeenly failed, he will merely switch on the emergency lights on the machine if it is necessary to land.

There will be services every day and night between Brisbane and Sydney and Sydney and Melbourne respectively What this will mean, say to a Queensland business man wanting to make a rush trip to Melbourne, can easily be appreciated.

The machines on these new airways— one has already had successful trial nights—will bo practically identical, in dimensions and . ther respects, with the famous Southern Cross, with, however, slightly more attractive lines than that faithful old Penelope that safely saw the two young Ulysses and their companions through their hazardous journeys. The machines on the new services are known as Fokkers, but strictly they are Avro X Fokkers. The Avro people purchased from the Fokker Company the right to build these machines, of the Southern Cross type, in England, with slight alterations to conform to British air regulations. If one wanted to buy one in Australia it would cost something over £9000. If one engine fails, all will still be well. If, again, two of the three engines fail, the remaining engine will have a gliding range of about oO miles at a high altitude. The principal impression of a trial flight on one cf these machines at Mascot a day or two ago was that of just floating in midair, and an absence of realisation that the 'plane was tearing through space at 95 miles an hour.

Three of these machines have arrived in Sydney; a fourth is expected very shortly from England. The pilots will include two experienced British airmen, and Mr. Shortbridge, one of Australia's most prominent pilots, and a former instructor with the New South Wales Aero Club. It will, by the way, be as easy to converse m the cabins of these machines as in a train.

What this means will be appreciated by those who have been in the air in smaller machines, with the roar of the engine in their ears. A comforting sound in one respect, as indicating that all's welJ, but an uncomfortable one in other ways.