COMMERCIAL AVIATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 801, 23 October 1929, Page 9

COMMERCIAL AVIATION

PROGRESS IN AMERICA CARRIAGE OF MAILS Commercial flying in the United States is going ahead by leaps and bounds. Mr. Eric Rhodes, a director of the Fletcher Construction Company, -who returned today after spending three months abroad, found that commercial aviation had made wonderful progress in America. He said that airplanes and trains ran in conjunction with each other. Passengers making a journey across the continent flew by day and travelled in the train at night. Mails were carried by air from San Francisco to New York in two days. There had been one or two serious smashes, but this did not deter the aviators. Mr. Rhodes found that it was possible to fly from San Francisco to Los Angeles in three hours, spend some time in the latter city and return to San Francisco at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Many people in the United States possessed their own planes and air clubs were popular institutions. RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND He found that there were two opposing views regarding relationship between England and the United States. One group was antagonistic and declared that Americans were the only people on earth and that they always would be.

The other group, which predominated, saw an ultimate union between the two nations. He thought that the Rotarians spread the gospel of international relationship. The men who favoured England were those who had been out of America. On the whole Mr. Rhodes found that the feeling toward England was friendly and that a good deal of the antagonism from certain quarters was fostered by one group of newspapers. Nobody, however, wished to discuss the question of trade between the United States and New Zealand. “When 1 mentioned the amount of our imports from the States and compared them with what America took from us they w-ould not continue the subject,” he said.