AVIATION

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 140, 10 December 1929, Page 10

AVIATION

THOSE WHO FLY

AND THOSE WHO DON'T

A correspondent, E. A. Gosse, expresses surprise that an article which appeared in "The Post" a few days ago on the problems and tendencies of aviation did not give rise to a lively discussion of the important issues raised. He is disappointed, he writes, at the lack of interest in such a unique subject as the rights and liberties of the general public, and asks whether that lack of interest is due to an impression that there is nothing to discuss or to mere sluggishness of thought.

His own view is that aviation, unless firmly controlled and restricted, will prove a menace to popular liberty. The rights of the landholder goes right out to space, and he challenges the justice of anyone trespassing over his house to the endangerment of the lives and property below. Many will pooh-pooh and ridicule the foregoing as' having no reality, but, brief and limited as is the life of aviation, there are numbers of instances in which non-participants have been involved in death or material damage. To mention a few of them: an aeroplane crashed into the orphanage at Christehureh a few years ago, fortunately without loss of life; a man at his work in an open field in New South Wales was killed recently by a machine crashing into him. Recent cable news reported the falling of an aeroplane in U.S.A., whereby a number of innocent lives were lost and two houses burnt to the ground. The "Manchester Guardian" relates how the residentsof villages near aerodromes in Britain are terrified by the proximity of aeroplanes, and petitioned ParliaI ment for relief. In this connection, the correspondent suggests, the residents of Eongotai will regret the day they permitted the establishment of the local aerodrome.

It cannot be denied that the lives and property of the general public are exposed to destruction by the trespass of flying machines over them. The further query remains: Is aviation of such importance as to warrant this infringement of the general rights? There is no need to stress the sacredness of life or to the undoubted right of all to the fullest protection against every foreseeable hazard. It is no reply to say that the risks of aviation, added to those we already take in our daily life, would be hardly perceptible. These other risks, largely vocational, are taken, if not willingly, at least with open eyes, but the dangers of aviation are purely extraneous, and there is not a shadow of right to compel nonparticipants to share in them. If aviation grows, the toll of life, both innocent and guilty, will far exceed that now caused by motor vehicles, of which the "Manchester Guardian," commenting on last year's toll of life in Britain, says: "It is questionable whether the good resulting from the use of motor-vehicles is not far outweighed by the harm they do." It seems that our conception of what constitutes civilisation needs overhauling, continues the writer. Is civilisation spiritual or is it material? "Whatever is the truth, it is evident we are enormously over-developed on the material side of our nature. It is pitiable to note the almost entire lack of appreciation of the intrinsic diguity of human life as such, and the complete acceptance of the sordid views of money-getting and so-called pleasuremaking which fills the lives of so many. According to a modern thinker, civilisation is due to the association of man on terms of equality. We are a long way yet from equal terms, and the growth of aviation under our present system merely accentuates the injustices under which our imperfect civilisation groans. Even for war purposes aeroplanes were not by any means an unqualified success. It is estimated that the flying service during the Great War occupied the time of two million people and cost over two hundred million pounds. A well-known genera], at the conclusion of the war, gave it as his opinion that the men and the money could have been used to better advantage in the other branches of the army.

Another correspondent, ]Trank Munson, suggests that the attention of the aviation authorities should be turned to Westport, where conditions are, in his opinion, almost ideal for the establishment of an airport from which all parts of New Zealand could be rapidly served by connecting aircraft. He maintains that that development must come sooner or later, and asks, in conclusion, why not sooner?