ALONG THE SKYWAYS

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20260, 31 July 1937, Page 25 (Supplement)

ALONG THE SKYWAYS

CANADA’S RECORD. AIR-FREIGHT YEAR. OPENING UP THE “NORTHLAND.” MINING DEVELOPMENT. LONDON, June 8. Canadian transport aeroplanes set new records in 193-6 for amounts of express-freight and airmail carried, according to statistics, Just to hand, whioh were specially compiled from the results of long and exhaustive enquiry among the many companies engaged in diverse forms of commercial air operation throughout the great Dominion. Freight carriage increased by no less than 43 per cent over the 1935 aggregate to approximately 25,250,0001b —11,272 tons—while airmail reached a new high level of 1,153,8121 b.

Forty-three freight carriers returned figures included In the year’s aggregate; the eight largest operators among them aooounted for 194 million pounds. Canadian Airways led with 7,749,9261 b, followed by Starratt Airways with 3,598,0001 b., and Wings Limited with 2,231,7311 b. These three companies used between them 53 airoraft of seven different types.

'Commercial aviation in Canada provides, perhaps, the world’s best example of the benefits conferred on mankind by the aeroplane. The Dominion’s Immense territory and laok over large regions of adequate ground communications make it ideal for the proper development of civil flying enterprise, and Canadian air transport companies have done much to make possible the exploitation of areas that are inaccessible except by air, thereby adding greatly to the national wealth. Far the larger part of the aerial freighting is associated with mining. Typical of the kind of contract that mining brings to the air transport concern was that fulfilled by Wings Limited. It called for transportation of an entire mining plant a distance of 145 miles, from a terminus 325 miles east of Lake Winnipeg to a new mining site just over the Ontario boundary. The total wiegjit of cargo Involved was more than 600,0001 b., and included a mine hoist, a mine cage, sinking buckets, rock drills and steel, eight ore oars, steel rail, 60,0001 b of dynamite, seventy workmen and their belongings, and food-, stuffs weighing more than 80,0001 b.

PROGRESS IN AVIATION

Maohlnery By Air. Speolal air bases, with radio stations, were established at both ends of the run. Some of the machinery to be moved raised difficult problems because of its weight and bulkiness. The ore compressors, when assembled, weighed 14,0001 b, and the hoist i'GOOlb. The sub-base of the compressor was fifteen feet long; it was cut In two and provision made for re-assembly at the new site. Each piece weighed half a ton. Two tractors weighed 6250 and 57001 b. They were taken apart, the heaviest single pieces carried in the aeroplanes being the motors, which weighed 1800 and 12301 b. The contract was completed within scheduled time.

An interesting form of air freighting enterprise which is peculiar to Canada is the transport of fish from lakes inaccessible by surface vehioles. One company alone—United Air Transport, with headquarters at Edmonton, Alberta—reports the carriage of more than a million pounds of fish during the past minter. Interesting experiments were also made in the restocking of small lakes. One test saw the dropping of eleven hundred gpeokled trout, in the form of “flngerllngs” 24 inohes long. The fish were carried in cans, and while the aeroplane flew slowly over the lake they were placed in nets and dropped from a height of approximately a thousand feet. Subsequently, six hundred of the flsh were recovered, and the results indicate a loss of only 5 per cent. “Transportation Is Civilisation.”

During the past seven years air freighting in Canada has grown from a few small isolated operations to beoome an industry engaging more than forty operating concerns, serving vast regions in what is commonly called the “northland” where other forms of transport are for the most part impracticable and are always more expensive. Mining and air freighting have developed together in recent years, while the application of air services to problems of everyday transport and communications is bringing profound changes to the social and economic life of “frontier” areas frbm Tklavik on the extreme westerly Arctic coast of Canada to the little Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Conduct of these freighting operations frequently demands the highest levels of courage, resource and determination among pilots, engineers and other air transport personnel. Companies continue operations under weather ‘ conditions that may see fhe thermometer drop to sixty degrees below zero, without the help of any but the most primitive ground organisation.