FORTY-SEATERS

Evening Star, Issue 22456, 29 September 1936, Page 7

FORTY-SEATERS

• NEW FRENCH AIR LINERS French airliners to carry 40 passenfers and a crew of four are shortly to e put on the London-Paris-Lyons-Mar-seilles. route, says the ‘ Daily Telegraph.’ The Golden Clippers now in use are not out of date, but increasing traffic demands machines of greater capacity. The new type is a Farman, of which six are being built. They have a front bay window in the cabin giving ah unrestricted view forward, a cocktail bar, a library, a bridge room, and two saloons. Of the first two, one is fitted with four Gnome Rhone 800 h.p. engines and the other with four Hispano-Suiza 690 h.p. engines. The results of comparison in operation will determine the choice o£ engines for the other four. It is 'a noteworthy fact that in all the principal airline countries fourengined 40-seaters are now being built. Great Britain will have flying boats and land aeroplanes of this capacity. The United States will soon have the new 40-seater Douglas, and Holland, France, and Germany have adopted the same policy. _ ' ' Airline developments in Trance at the present moment are of much interest. A Far Eastern machine for 16 sleeping berths, or 24 day seats, is being built by Marcel Bloch. It will have four engines. . On the South Atlantic service France is using both flying boats and land aeroplanes. One hundred successful mailcarrying flights have already, been made. To be first in the field with a regular Atlantic passenger flying boat service is the object of Air France, and two four-engined flying boats, capable of carrying a ton of mail 3,000 miles against a 30 miles per hour head wind have been launched. _ One has nearly finished its tests, and the other is about to begin them. Both have comfortable sleeping quarters for four passengers. Air Franoe lines now span the old and the new worlds. There is a closeknit European system and two longdistance arms, one across two continents and an ocean to Santiago on the Pacific coast, and the other across India to Hanoi in French Indo-Chiua.