FLYING AS PASTIME

Hokitika Guardian, 15 February 1927, Page 1

FLYING AS PASTIME

BEUhMiNG POP Li DAK IN .SYDNEY'. SYDNEY, Fob. 3. In .Sydney at the present time at least twenty people are known, officially to be waiting to buy aeroplanes for business and pleasure flights, thanks largely to the stimulus which the Aero Club lias given to Hying in New South Wales. There must be something in it when olio of Sydney's most prominent figures in the motor business, Air S. L. Taylor, openly asserts that travelling by air is far more comfortable than riding in a motor-car. lie is not speaking without bis book, for what lie does not know about motoring is not worth knowing, while the aeroplane which be now uses alike for pleasure and business is the third machine which he has owned. His recent trip with a, party by air to the Federal capital lias now been eclipsed by a flight from Sydney to Melbourne, which, ill actual Hying time, occupied seven hours. The machine lie lias just bought, and which is designed solely for touring, has a erasing speed of eighty miles an hour and a maximum speed of 100 miles an hour. It has accommodation for three passengers. The journey is an illustration of the advantages of flying when applied to business. Among the pupils of the Aero Club are a number of motorists, including a prominent woman motorist. Perhaps one of the fascinations of flying for them is the lure of speed, and the knowledge that, in the air, they are not hampered by traffic constables or bv other traffic.

The Aero Club’s reduction of 40 per cent, in the cost of solo flying offers to prospective pupils the opportuniy of flying for less than half the cost of a taxi-cah. The flying costs work out at 7s Oil per quarter hour, which, on a basis of Of) miles an hour, is only sixpence per mile. The reduction will tax tile resources of the dull, but if it can pay expenses it will be satisfied. This is all it aims to do. The State Governor (Sir Dudley do Chair) is a patron of the club, but lie lias not so far evinced the enthusiasm for flying manifested by the Governor-General. As a distinguished .seaman. Sir Dudley no doubt feels safer on the water than in the air. The Aero Club, tvliicli is one of Sydney’s lives! organisations, and which lias the enthusiastic backing of the Tress, brings out monthly a most informative little journal aptly styled “The Fly Paper.”