TRAVEL BY AIR

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 661, 13 October 1933, Page 7

TRAVEL BY AIR

sdviET LEAD WAY f i - GIANT MACHINE BEING BUILT TO ACCOMMODATE 128 ; i PASSENGERS. \ ! GERMAN ACTIVITY. The ' Soviet giant aeroplane, K7, which laccommodates 128 passengers, and a drew of 10, has undergone test fiights/ which were pronounced successfuli!, says the Sydney Daily Telegraph. 1 There is nothing secret about the big :aejroplane; it follows designs which, | on a smaller scale, have been successsful elsewhere. At present, sim,ilari| giants are under construction in Germany, Italy, France and the United j States. The j Soviet has simply stolen a. march jon the others and, utilising labour 8i± high-pressure, finished first. Such'j big aircraft normally require two or\three years to complete. They are fouil-t throughout of steel. Where to put | the hundred-odd passengers they were designed to carry was at first a I problem. Earlier plans put them inSthe hull. The fDornier DOX, for instance, had.a large dining and reading-room amidshnps, with sleeping cabins towards the rear. It had th'e disadvantage, from the passengers' point of view, that they were more or less "travelllng' blind." Their only outloolc wa-s through portholes about the size of llthose on steamers' hull-cabins. In the new air-liners this is all altered.J Huge windows (made of unbreakaKle glass), nearly nine feet square, | light the main dining; saloon and loixnge; th'ese windows look for"ward tjo the direction in which the aeroplaioie -is flying. Somtjwhat smaller windows light the sleeping cabins, also in the front edge ofi the wings. The kitchen is immediately behind the "dining-room. j Trouble Overcome. This idoes away with the trouble which tlu,e DOX stewards encountered — they jhad to carry food from the kitchen, j near the rear of the hull, along rmrrow coridors to the diningroom afhidships, in "bumpy" weather. This |occurred on the world flight which the giant aeroplane made (with' a limiteld number of passengers and in easy j stages) in 1931. It was admittedly not exactly a ' pleasurei jaunt, any more than that of the giant airsliip Graf Zeppelin, which took a wealthy crowd round the world 'in 1929 m 21 days (actual flight time a little jover 12 days). There- 1 has always been rivalry between huilders of giant superballoons (such asithe Graf Zeppelin) and aeroplane cojnstructors, as to which will secure tjhe future transport of mai], cargo, -akd passengers. 'The Graf Zeppelin for some time past h|is been making scheduled flights (jtiearly every week) across the South Atlantic, carrying passengers, mails afid light cargo. But the recent crashes of the American airship Akron und the British R101 have been bad advertisements for lighter-th'an-air| machines. IGerman Competitors.As a jresult there has been a recrudescepce of giant aeroplane construction. A German company is buildmgia. fieet of sister ships to the DOX toi compete with the Graf Zeppelin nir the Berlin to Rio de Janeiro run. iThis includes one trans-oceanic flight (Africa to Brazil) of 900 miles. Such long flights impose a limit ;o passengers carried and space avail-^ able, owing to the weight of the necessary 'fuel. An ocean flight, even at 145 miles an hour speed, beeomes a ticklisih' business. The l^iter giant aeroplanes, unlike the Dornier type, have a novel luxury for paksengers — observation decks raised apove the top of the aeroplan#, where itf is possible to sit behind windshields in fair weather. From the passenger point of view this weather question is a paramount one. Ir bad weather an airship is tossed about like a cork, Daring her world ffight the ■ Graf Zeppelin ran into a mild storm. The ship was damagejl, and the passengers thrown 'about li^e ninepins. A panic reigned among them, which the captain shrewdl / terminated by dosing them liberallji all round with champagne. Aeroplanes are steadier than Zeppelins in such circumstances, but a giant machine in bumpy air (many ascending and descending currents) drops suddenly like a gigantic lift, with disastrous results on the less "airworjthy" passengers. 1