AIR TRANSPORT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 February 1939, Page 5

AIR TRANSPORT

DEVELOPMENT OF EMPIRE SERVICES. FEEDERS TO CONNECT WITH MAIN ROUTES. An analysis of some of the latest reports as to civil air progress throughout the Empire emphasises one point which is now of outstanding importance. This is the influence which is being exercised on commercial air development overseas by the great "all-up" non-surcharge mail scheme. Not only is this scheme having a progressively stimulating influence along trunk routes, but it is also leading now, to greatly increased activity as regards the development of internal air transport in all the areas it serves. This, of course, represents the natural desire of Empire territories to reap the fullest local advantage from the non-surcharge carriage of mails. And it is this phase of Empire aviation on which is being illustrated so strikingly, just now, by messages from many different quarters. Such reports may be summarised by saying that regionjs overseas now served by the “all-up” plan are determined that bulk mail-loads reaching them from the Homeland shall be delivered with the least possible delay not only in their 'Chief cities but also throughout outlying areas located, in some cases, at very considerable distances from any main centre of supply. To give effect to this policy means, of course, the establishment of further “feeder” or auxiliary air-lines, and it is in this regard that one report after another now tells the same story—a story of additional aeroplane alightinggrounds; of amplified wireless and weather services; of improved technical equipment of all kinds; and, based on all such improved organisation, the spreading of still wider networks of internal routes for the collection of the delivery of air-borne mails. It is in this way that the policy of carrying all first-class mails by air on main routes will, in due course, bring the benefits of air transport the most remote of Empire trading-posts and stations reducing to a matter of hours or days, journeys which have previously occupied several weeks or perhaps even months.