HIGH SPEED TRAVEL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1939, Page 2

HIGH SPEED TRAVEL

CONTINENTAL FLYING ROUTES.

OVER 200 MILES PER HOUR

Flying the other day non-stop from the London air-port to Zurich, one of, the new Imperial Airways 4-engined express-planes of the “F” class, the Fortuna, succeeded in maintaining throughout this flight of 500 miles a speed of over 200 miles an hour. The Fortuna was piloted on this occasion by one of the veteran air-skip-pers of Imperial Airways, Captain A. B. H. Youell. Leaving Croydon at 9.21 a.m. the Fortuna landed at Zurich airport at 11.54 a.m. This flight afforded yet another illustration of the high speeds attained by these new “F” class express-planes when operating between London and destinations on the Continent.

It may be remembered that not long ago one of them, the Frobisher, succeded in flying from London across to the Paris air-port of Le Bourget in 53 minutes. It was another air-liner of this same “F” class, the Falcon, which established a new commercial air-speed record on the London-Brussels route. Leaving Croydon with eleven passengers and a ton of mails and freight, the Falcon completed the 200 miles flight to Brussels in 48 minutes, averaging throughout a speed of 250 miles an hour, and beating the previous record by five minutes. And this same air-liner, the Falcon, also put another remarkable achievement to its credit when, carrying a ton of mails from London to Marseilles, it completed the 641 miles flight, non-stop, at an average speed of 222 miles an hour.