AIR TRANSPORT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 January 1939, Page 9

AIR TRANSPORT

DEVELOPMENTS IN BRITISH SERVICES

NEW ERA IN LONG-DISTANCE TRAVEL.

TRANS-TASMAN & OTHER ROUTES.

The year 1939 will have the distinction of being the twenty-first in the development of British aviation on definitely commercial lines; and one of its outstanding features —already promised for the spring—will be the opening-up of a regular flying-boat service to and from across the North Atlantic.

It was at just this time of the year, twenty years ago now, that final touches were being put to a scheme which, in February, 1919, led to the coming into being of a Civil Aviation Department in the British Ministry. And it was the institution of that Department, and the bringing into law in the same month of the Air Navigation Acts (1911-19) that ushered in an air travel era of which we shall be reaping further important fruits this year. For the impending North Atlantic commercial service Imperial Airways will be employing four new multi-en-gined flying-boats of a long-range type —Cabot, Caribou, Connemara and Clyde. These new aircraft, though generally similar in design to the famous Caledonia and Cambria which flew on the successful North Atlantic experimental flights of 1937, are capable of carrying heavier loads on non-stop North Atlantic crossings. Another feature of these new flyingboats is that they are equipped for refuelling while in the air; ,and final trials will be carried out with a view to the adoption of aerial refuelling in connection with this year’s ocean crossings—which are expected to begin as soon as the bases on the other side of the Atlantic are ice-free and ready for service.

Apart from the establishment of a North Atlantic air-line, another new sea route of 1939 will be that crossl- - the Tasman between Sydney and Auckland, thus bringing New Zealand within the general network of Imperial routes.

Important developments are also impending in Pacific zones, including survey flights from New Zealand to investigate projected commercial services; one of these being the establishment, in due course, of a trans-ocean route across to Canada. Although all such development work in long-distance air travel on Empire air routes promises to be the dominant feature of 1939, much valuable progress is also promised in other directions —one of these being a general development of facilities on air-lines between London and the Continent; on which routes passengers will have the advantage of flying in the new Imperial express luxury-planes of the “E” and “F” (classes.