AIR TRUNK LINE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 301, 15 August 1932, Page 7

AIR TRUNK LINE

BRITISH. MILITARY PLANES BLAZE NEW TRAILS. Survey operations of the air route between Caluctta and Singapore, eonducted by the Royal Air Force with the co-operation of the Siamese Government, promise to simplify fiying over country which is in many places vastly important because of its loeation along the main air trunk line to the Far East and Australia. British, Dutch and French air liners have flown many times over the route. Light aeroplane adventurers set on breaking the Australia-England record have passed swiftly along it. More than once Royal Air Force fiying boats have flown information along the coast between Calcutta and Singapore. In these ways much information has been gathered about fiying conditions along the routes. But much more remains to be done before the airway in this region is suitable for regular fiying at all times of the year, particularly in land-planes, and the survey operations now in progress are directed to the improvement of the route from this point of view. The risks are greatly intensified during the monsoon period and when the survey work was begun it was recognised that a first essential was an exhaustive reeonnaissanee planned to correct and to modernise existing maps. Sites suitable for emergency landings and areas which are known to be exeeptionally dangerous in bad fiying weather are being darefully charted, and other information useful to the airman got together in easily accessible form. A portion of the route, between Victoria Point and Alor Star, Siamese territory, had never previously been developed, though it is one of the most difficult stages of the entire journey of 2000 miles from Calcutta to Singapore. The Siamese authorities had already surveyed the northern sections of the main Burma-Malaya air line, and their co-operation was sought hy the Royal Air Force for the closing of the hiatus between Victoria Point and Alor Star. An offer that the Siamese Government should utilise the services and experience of the Royal Air Force in the proposed survey and choice of sites for landing grounds was heartily accepted, and the work was begun. Thus, in this and many other regions, the task of establishing a worldwide network of air lines goes steadily forward. When the present survey is completed, the fiying machines will he able to move more surely over the hills and jungle of the Malay peninsula. And once again, the British military air service blazes the trail for the air liner and tbe private flyer.