The Sun TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 1928 TRANSPORT BY AIR

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 378, 12 June 1928, Page 8

The Sun TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 1928 TRANSPORT BY AIR

ONE of the consolations for the new general manager of railways in his colossal task to make a State enterprise pay its way is that Mr. H. 11. Sterling will not need to worry for a long time about competition from commercial aviation. His anxiety will be confined to beating motor transport and to persuading the railwaymen, including a multitude of officials, to save at least a ha’penny a day in the hope of saving £II,OOO a year. These anxieties are political problems of the first importance in New Zealand, but in other countries railway administrators are beginning to worry about the possibilities of having to combat really effective competition from commercial aircraft. They have not yet got to the panic stage where and when the appointment of a commission of inquiry appears to be the last hope for a remedy, but they have reached the point at which speculation about the threat of competitive transport by air exercises the minds of railroad and steamboat administrators.

The prospect of big business in the air is most prominent in the United States, where, it is reported, “the possibility of profit from passengers in air transportation is a subject that is holding the attention of a number of foresighted railroad officers.” For this there is good reason. Last year a dozen airlines operating over 20,000 miles of scheduled routes in America carried 476,724 passengers. If private flights were included, the total would be well over half a million passengers a year. And the traffic grows. Everywhere in the Union the development of transport by air is rapid and popular. On the European Continent and in Great Britain commercial aviation has become a normal, almost a casual feature of daily transport. Between January 1, 1925, and March 28 of this year, the Imperial Airways alone flew 2,639,370 miles and carried 56,642 passengers without any injury. The German Luft Hansa planes also have an exceptionally fine record and, by maintaining an all-the-year-round service, carry some 60,000 passengers a year. Nine years ago all the commercial aviation services throughout the world did not carry more than a total of 2,000 passengers. If development continues at the same pace during the next decade there will be many royal commissions sitting in 1938!

What could he more alluring than the experiments of Mr. Van Lear Black, retired American newspaper owner and business man, who uses a Jupiter-Fokker monoplane like a taxi, and thinks nothing of flying from London to have lunch in the Bois de Boulogne, and returning from Paris in the afternoon? This lucky middle-aged millionaire has enjoyed 60,000 miles of air travel. Last year his long-distance flights on business bent equalled a double trip round the earth. With no more fuss than is made about the trip of a politician from Wellington to Hokianga, Mr. Black “flew across the historic cities of Europe, the gold domes of Kazimain, the Garden of Eden, Ur of the Chaldees, the great plains of India, and the tropical forests of Malaya, and then after a week of work and play retraced his steps and returned to London five weeks later as if nothing had happened.” . Of course, it will never be for everybody to fly over the Arch of Ctesiphon and the date gardens of Bagdad as though it were a Labour Day picnic outing, but air travel in some countries is well within the compass of ordinary folk. To-day, one can enjoy an air trip of 2,000 miles round Europe for £3O 12s 6d, including the premium for life insurance, 12/- for £I,OOO a day. The administrators of New Zealand’s railways had better popularise their crude system while opportunity lasts.