RUSSIA’S AIR LINES

Hokitika Guardian, 18 November 1930, Page 3

RUSSIA’S AIR LINES

MOSCOW TO KABUL. EXPECTATIONS BOH 1933. Plying as a means of cominmr'cation is'making.' steady and rapid progress in the Soviet Union (writes a corresponlent of the' -London “Observer”). On August 1 the new air line, MoscowTashkent, was initiated, and it is now ' oss hie to fiy the whole distance from dosoow to Kabul, the capital of Af- : ilianistan, although as a matter of iractice it cannot be said that the ashkent-Kabul air line invites the nitron age of the casual tourist. The twenty air lines now functioning n the Soviet Union cover a distance of ibout sixteen thousand miles and las! year carried 11,47(5 passengers; by 1933 the magic last year of the pyatiletka, or live-year-plan, it is expected that three hundred thousand passengers will travel over one hundred and fortyfive lines, covering a distance of some eighty thousand miles. No figures are given regarding the number of aeroplanes which are operating on these iMGK ; hut it is a fair assumption that :he number is increasing rapidly to ■onform with such ambitious plans ol ‘xpansion. The pilots on the Soviet passenger aeroplanes have hitherto Seen reserve army officers.; now spesia l clnails are being opened for. civilian iviators. IN PLACE OE RAILWAYS Passenger aviation: pi is wider the general supervision of the Dobrolet, a publicly-controlled company in which' the shares are mostly held by State trusts and similar organisations. A .subsidy from the Go\eminent covers its losses In the beginning imported machines were used on the lines of the Dobrolet; but now Russian areoplanes of the three-motor type devised b.v the engineer Tupoley, and of the single-motor type in vented by another engineer. Kalinin, are beginn ng to appear. The Dobrolet claims the remarkable record of having functioned for seven years without an accident. Last year two accidents attended by fatalities occurred on an independent Ukrainian line, which has ■ subsequently been taken over by the Dobrolet. A glance at an aeroplane map of the Soviet Union shows that the routes now in operation fall into two main categories .The longest regular lines' 1 the Moscow-irut.sk (over three thousand miles) and the Moscow-Tashkent and Moscow-T.flis (each about two thousand miles) follow fairly closely some of the main railroad routes. At the same time a network of. air lines in the Far North and in Central Asia serves as a useful substitute for railroads. OPENING UP SIBERIA. Irkutsk lias air communication with Yakutsk, eighteen hundred miles away the capital of the vast sparsely-popu-lated section of Siberia known as Yakutia, and there is.a twelve-hundred-mile air line between Irkutsk and Boadibo, the centre of the Lena goldmining region. A six-hour flight brings the traveller from Verkline-Udinsk, a station on the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Ulan-Bator ('formerly Orga), the capital of Outer Mongolia, a region with which the Soviet Union maintains increasngly close political and economic relations.

Some of the wildest places in Tadjikistan and in Russian Central Asia have been made accessible through a number of air lines centring in Tashkent and Samarkand; and from several points on the Turkish Railroad actual or projected air lines point like arrows to the frontier of Western China. . A ir lines which are planned for the future will traverse the Far,North ci Vxua, bisect the vast steppes of Kavmk can, and make possible air communications between Moscow and such eastern . illposts oil Siberia as Sakhalin Island and Kamchatka.