CITY MEN “FLY” 4,300 MILES A YEAR

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 314, 27 March 1928, Page 1

CITY MEN “FLY” 4,300 MILES A YEAR

TTHERE are people in the city who fly thousands of miles every year and never get any credit for it except a curt “good morning” or a tired “good night.” No one ever thinks of recommending them for decoration, though the safety of their service makes the record of Imperial Airways look like a suicide campaign. True, they rarely reach an altitude higher than 100 feet, and they never tackle any dangerous stunts, but they are on the job five and a-half days of every week, droning vertically upwards or dropping like a plummet. They are the lift men of Auckland, and the distance record is probably held by the “top floor" elevator of the New Zealand Insurance Building. Up and down the well, which is about 100 feet in height, the lift travels about 400 times a day, which represents a distance of about 4,300 miles a year. One trip a day for a year would mean a distance of over 10 miles a year. Few of the liftmen in Queen Street buildings travel less than 1,000 miles a year up and down their wells.