EMPIRE AIR SERVICE

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20918, 25 September 1939, Page 9

EMPIRE AIR SERVICE

REGULARITY PREFERRED SPEED A SECONDARY MATTER NOTABLE TRIP AROUND WORLD Users of Imperial Airways Empire services prefer regularity to speed. This was the impression gained by Mr A. C. Campbell Orde, operations manager of Imperial Airways, who last month landed at Croydon alter an air tour of the Near and Far East extending over 30,000 miles. He said that everywhere he went he found business men and others who had come to rely on the air services most anxious that the regularity of the flights be maintained rather than efforts be made to speed up the service. They pointed out that the rapidity of the Empire air services at present was convenient enough for trade and commerce. The main thing was dependability of these services. The 30,000-mile tour was made by Mr Campbell Orde in 46 days and embraced 208 flying hours. Mr Campbell Orde expressed his pleasure at having been able to rfiake such an extensive inspection of the company’s routes. He flew with R.N.A.S. and the R.A.F. during the Great War and after two years instructing Chinese to fly at Peking, he joined Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft as a test pilot. A native of Argyllshire, he is 40 years of age and has been operations manager of Imperial Airways since last March. Matches Over the Desert A box of celluloid matches has just arrived in Paris after a notable trip around the world. They are matches provided in New York and Paris cafes for the well-known American game of “matches” and were inadvertently taken by a United States journalist from a Paris cafe. He took them across the Atlantic to New York and on arrival there found his next assignment in China, so his matches went with him to Chungking, where, during air raids, he played with them and taught the local Chinese the game. Later, the matches accompanied their owner down the history-making Burma Road and in an Imperial Airways aeroplane over the deserts of Iraq. And they are now back in Paris, the newspaperman having apologised to their original owner and in return been presented with the matches—a dear friend of his round-the-world trip. Birthday of Commercial Aviation British commercial aviation celebrated its twentieth birthday last month. On the morning of August 25, 1919, three aeroplanes left London for Paris, each with paying passengers. The first aeroplane to leave London was a Handley Page. The second was an Airco 4 piloted by Lieutenant E. H. Lawford, and the third an Airco 16. Though the Handley Page was the first commercial aeroplane to leave London on August 25, 1919, the Handley Page Transport, Ltd. did not begin their regular service until a week later. The distinction of inaugurating the service belongs, therefore, to the pilot of the Airco 4. He is now Captain Lawford, aerodrome officer at Lymprte.