Too Many Air Fatalities

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 450, 4 September 1928, Page 1

Too Many Air Fatalities

COMPLAINTS IN FRANCE

Most of Machines Are Out of Date

AVIATION BEGGARED

(United Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association)

Recct 11.50 a.m. PARIS, Monday. THE tragedy in which M. Bokanowski, Minister of Commerce, and his companions were killed, draws from the entire Press the suggestion that French aviation is yielding an excessive number of fatalities.

The universal opinion in France is that there is something seriously wrong in military and civil aviation. Foreign experts say that French airmen have put their finger on the immediate cause when they point out that most of the military machines are out of (j£.te, and the commercial machines are suffering from excessive work and insufficient upkeep. It is suggested in both cases that the pilots dare not protest, though

they know the machines are unsafe, otherwise they would be black marked. The primary reason in both cases is lack of money. The service is allegedly starved, and the commercial companies’ subsidies are beggarly. BRITAIN SENDS SYMPATHY DEATH OF MINISTER British Official Wireless. Reed. Noon. RUGBY, Monday. The British Government and Sir Samuel Hoare, the Air Minister, have sent messages to Paris, expressing profound sympathy at the death of M. Bokanowski, the French Minister for Commerce, including civil aviation, in an airplane crash at Toul yesterday, in which four others, including the secretary-general of thb Aerial Navigation Company, were also killed. Sir Samuel Hoare speaks of “the irreparable loss which the French Government and French aviation have sustained in the tragic death of M. Bokanowski.