Pacific Island Hops

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 41, 4 March 1937, Page 12

Pacific Island Hops

The liodern Air Travellers Way_

J'O the stay-at-home tremendousji changes In world conditions are : heard about so gradually that when he is 1 aware that life is altered it seems to : have always been much like that, We ' hear of giant clippers of the clouds that make 2000-mile hops to the Far East and Australia or the hopk-up in China of services from Australia and Manila, the chartering of private 'planes in India to make connections at Basra or Bagdad, and the Egyptian junctions with the South African and Sudan service; but it all seems flimsy and far away from the ordinary services of ship and train that were wonders in their day (writes a Manchester Guardian correspondent). . A Mental Jolt. COMETIMES an arrival from the eentre of this new life gives one a jolt right into the ordinary existence of the future, or, say, ten years on. Such a jolt I have just experienced from the arrival of Mr. Faul Fatterson, the head of the Baltimore Sun newspaper and one of the most vital forces in modern Ameriean journalism, a man who has given many jolts in his time to his newspaper friends. Mr. Fatterson has just arrived after. a trip to Tokyo, 90 per cent. of which was made by air. He left New York on October 12 by sleeper 'plane and rushed across the Ameriean continent, lunched at Los Angeles, arrived at San Francisco the next afternoon, and left there at three o'clock on the 14th in the Fhilippine clipper for Honolulu, which he reached the next morning. He spent a day and a night in the island, left in the early morning, and reached the lonely little Midway Island and spent' the night there. Then a hop on the 17th, Jahding on the lagoon at Wake Island, 1,800 miles away. They had then had a curious experience due to international time, a3 the time changed to Sunday the 18th, and so they lost a day. A Great Receptlon, f\N the Monday they dxopped down on the Portuguese island of Guam, and on Tuesday the 20th they had reached Manila, where the company on their 'plane, which included many distinguished Ameriean newspaper men, had a great receptlon from the Fresident. On Friday, October 23, they flew to Macao, a short jump of 700 miles to that Fortuguese pogsession, the Monte Oarlo of the Pacific, and then to Hong-Kpng, which was reached in the afternoon. It was ah historicaJ arrival, for it was the end of the first flight of a passenger transport 'plane from the continent. of America to the continent of Asia. Farting from the Ameriean 'plane Mr. Fatterson then took his place on the 24th in the Ohina National Aviation Oorporation's 'plane to Shanghai, stopping at Swatow for tea and cakes, at Foochow for sandwiches and coffee, and at Manchow for tea and cakes, and so to Shanghai. From Shanghai he flew to Feking, and after a week therwe he flew back to Shanghai. He had then flown in ten days and one night actual fiying time about 16,000 miles, with nine days ashore and one day lost in the intrieacies of time. * • * * \ FTER a not uneventful visit to Tokyo — (which ended in Mr, Fatterson's giving the world the first news of the Japan-German treaty when he got to

Shanghai), he left Singapore on j November 26 by the Dutch K.L.M. liner, J calling at Sumatra and Rangoon, and teaching Calcutta on the 28th. After visits to Delhi and other pjaces, he took the Imperial air liner in Jodhpur, and left there on December 5 by- a Dutch liner to Bagdad, fuelling at Karachi, Jask, and Basra — a 2,000-mile flight. On December 6 at npon be was at Alexandria, and he left there on the 13th by the Imperial flying-boat Canopus Then a night at Athens, and Brindisi in the morning, after which he took to th« humdrum train, having done something like 20,000 miles of fiying. 'jPHE particular point about this traveller's fiying was that, apart from his arranged flight on the pioneer Ameriean commercial trip to Hong-Kong, ^ everything else was arranged by himseli in the ordinary way as one takes train or ship, and he only lost two days through delays. Mr. Trippe, the head of FanAmerican Lines, flew about 36,000 miles between' October 12 and December 20. The Air-Minded Chinese. T?UT it is not so much the marvel oi these long and speedy flights that impresses one as the attitude of the modern air traveller. To him everything is normal and the skies are- juai >- "mileage," Fragments of this air traveller's talk click in the mind with Kipling's prophetic air fantasies: At the stations in China it was curious. to see in towii aerodromes and at lonely little stations Chinese women with children waiting to join the 'planes, taking their time getting in, all good and ready travellers. Off they would go. I am told that many of them prefer the slow services so that they can register more houra in the air to impress their friends. They're air-minded sure enough, not like ( the Japanese, who only think of was machines. Yes, the Chinese did know about kites, •but that hasn't much to do with it. Or again: Midway Island ls just a spit of sand in the Pacific. No one ever heard of it until the Fan-Amerlcan Lines sent out workmen to qonstruct a port there and an hotel where they get a bath and cocktails and music in the palm courter-two thousand miles from anywhere and nevei a ship in sight. And again: I got to hear of Mr. Blank coming my way, so I flxed things and we met at Bagdad: A quick talk and a drink and he flew south to Johannesburg and I did my hook-up at Alexandria and so to Athens and on. MR. Fatterson to his trip had -rislted 1U- thirteen countries and stopped at twenty-nine hotels, and you will be sur* prised to hear that he found some difference among them. The question of air lanes and the international struggle for right of airway over countries which is now growtog totense, the mighty interests behtod the great lines to their manoeuvres ano alliances, recalling the great era of the international struggle for oil, and questions of relative speeds and safety records of natiQiial air services are matters on which this distinguished Ameriean is well able to speak, but, as Kipling said— that is another story.