EMPIRE AVIATION.

Evening Star, Issue 19793, 17 February 1928, Page 4

EMPIRE AVIATION.

Mr Burt Hinklkk, who belongs to Queensland, is making a flight from London to visit the old folks with Australian insouciance and absence ol fuss. Ho has tho smallest machine, though bo thinks it is very fit, and he is flying without a companion.' He has no time-table— constitutionally, or perhaps as the result of experience, he has a dislike for time-tables—and his people in Bunclaberg have been told to expect him when ho appears. But it is also a habit of Hinkler lo stay a long time in tho air, without caring for “ spells,” when the going is good he does not willingly remain in it otherwise—and his friends expect that he will finish hi? journey in something like record time. Already ho has reached Karachi, India, 5,240 miles from London, on his lonely journey, in seven days, and that is regarded as an uncommonly good beginning. The Lon-, don Press has been making a fuss of him. It is thought that this very cheap, common-sense sort of flying will make the best sort of advertisement for aviation.

The advertisements till now have been good and bad. It is not long since Hinkler, on a previous trip, came down, much against his will, in Poland. But Hying progresses, on the whole. Even commercial aviation progresses, though it does not yet pay. Britain has been no more first in this development than she was first in the exploring of the seas. With most to gain from world air services, she has a smaller mileage of them at present than any nation with comparable interests. Germany has passenger aircraft as far afield as Persia, and is interested indirectly in air transport in South America, while France is engaged in extending her important strategic air line to the French colonies on the western seaboard of Africa to link up with other services in Brazil and the Argentine. Belgium, too, has an air line of 1,500 miles in the Belgian Congo, while Great Britain has no commercial air line in the whole of Africa. The sole British effort oversea, directly financed from .the Mother Country, is an isolated link in a future EnglandAustralia air route, which runs from Cairo to Basra, and this is robbed of the greater part of its value by the Persian Government’s refusal to allow British aircraft to pass over its territory en route for India. Soviet influence may have had something to do with that veto. The Persians are not discouraging Russian air lines.

Big British schemes are, however, in train. The Indian Government is planning a line of aerodromes across India to Rangoon. A private scheme for a commercial air service between Penang and Singapore has been approved by the local Governments. The Dutch Government is believed to be ready to co-operatc with Great Britain in linking up its East Indian possessions, so that it may not be long before there are regular services between Great Britain and Australia. It is officially calculated that, with relays of aeroplanes, the journey from London to Karachi might be done, by day flying only, in six days, or with the aid of night flying in sixty-eight hours. For the voyage to Darwin the times would be 14 and 6J flays. Four; see-

planes of the Royal Air Force are now bound for Australia, taking their time over the journey with the object of acquiring the maximum information by the way. Sir Alan Cobham, during a new African flight, hopes to move all the Governments between Cairo and the Cape to a 'deeper appreciation of the value of connecting their territories by the air# There are also Commander Burney’s plans for'a service by airship across the Atlantic. In less than two years we should be hearing of first tests of those.