The Future Commercial Use of Aircraft.
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Suggestive Paper Before the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain.
Mr. G. Holt Thomas, on the 30th ult., read a paper before members (and their guests) of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain, at the Royal Society of Arts, John Street, Adelphi, W.C. We gather that the paper caused somewhat of a stir, by reason of its unconventional characteristics, but this is typical of Mr. Holt Thomas, as of all men who look ahead, and do things. The crusted atmosphere of the Society of Arts and the hyper-sensitiveness of the Aeronautical Society are certainly none the worse for the disturbance of their normal amenities, even if the paper at points did appear to be ultra-commercial, and in a few sentences, perhaps, too. specific in its reference to particular commercial achievements and intentions.
Passengers and Mails.
Mr. Holt Thomas based the plea for funds—in the shape of a relaxation of taxation, or of positive subsidies—largely upon the advantages to the country of passenger and mail services by aircraft. He gave numerous reasons, at various points in his paper, in support of his contentions, many of which are worthy of perusal in detail, but with which we have not space to deal fully. He devoted much of his time to answering objections, both hypothetical and real, and not a few of which have a bearing upon aircraft flight for any class of use. We deal later in our review with some of his references to those objections.
Other Uses.
A vista of widespread and far-reaching use should open before thinkers, according to Mr. Holt Thomas, under any or all of the following heads of likely employment of aircraft after the peace :—surveying; for those in a hurry ; for special Press reporting; for missionary work in undeveloped countries; for in. spection duties, as along the lines of rivers for transference of loads from points on backbone trans.. Continental railways, to points where no roads exist ; for the creation of new, small communities at a distance from standard means of communication by land Or sea.
• Land Surveying.
As -tea surveying, Mr. Holt Thomas writes :—" I am told by my friends amongst the large contractors that it would be worth an enormous sum to be in a. position not to know where to go, but to know where" pot to go ; and the production of some sort of cinematograph machine for the purpose has already been tried and certainly will be produced."
The Quick Deal.
Dealing with " those in a hurry," he has the following commcsit to offer :--e"-Nothing can compete with the aeroplane for those on special services in need of the greatest speed possible. This alone opens a, very wide field indeed. From a business point of view it must be remembered that speed is everything. One saw this in pre-war days in the competition between the steamship companies in the race across the Atlantic: A special aeroplane, i.e., special used i the sense of a epee-jai\ train, which is perfectly feasible to-day, will enable the business man to leave London in the morning, do his business in Paris, and be home again to dinner. It will take him to Bagdad in a day and a half, or to New York in two. days. Many business. men would smile at the idea of using this mode of conveyance to-day, but the only thing is to remind them that they also smiled in the early days of motorcars, and yet half the business to-day would take double +he time to do if the motorcar were not in existence."
The special uses of the aeroplane for reporting work, in the case of the daily Press, from the point of view of getting there and back first, are obvious.
To Convert the Heathen.
Religious development overseas receives attention from Mr. Holt Thomas in these words :—" A parson in a. far-off Colony has already proposed to use a seaplane -to fly round the coast, across bays, etc., and so visit his parish in hours instead of months of tedious travel." '
Inspection Duties.
Inspection possibilities are excellent, as we have indicated above, in special relation to the line of a, river. Mr. Holt Thomas deals with this point in the following words :—" Rivers again suggest a very probable and certainly useful employment of aeronautics, using them as a line of flight, Huge districts in many localities, such as Africa, are controlled by officials who usually employ the river as a means of transit, using motor launches, and then journey inland from the nearest point. Think of replacing this by the use of seaplanes doing 100 -miles an hour. This equally applies to mails. South America, Canada, Asia, all come into this scheme, and no landing ground is required. Nature has supplied it in the form of a smooth-surfaced river. Again, these ready-made roads could be followed at night with a searchlight on the machine with the greatest ease and no danger."
Local Terminal Service.
Local communication overland from remote stations on great trunk railways appeals to Mr. Holt Thomas for the reasons which he expresses as follows :—" The Cape to Cairo railway again affords simply an instance which occurs over and over again in that and other countries, where an aerial service might he employed as an adjunct to the railway. The present method would probably be one's arrival at a wayside station and then, say, 50 miles in a bullock wagon, or perhaps walking over jolty roads, or no roads at all, taking one or several days. Compare this with stepping into an aeroplane and arriving in half an hour. Certainly the development of all the Overseas Dominions will be largely affected by flying."
Establishment of Isolate'd Communities.
An interesting nroposal for the establishment of communities at a distance from other means of /awn.munication, is treated thus :—" There is another outlet for commercial aeronautics than from capital to capital, viz., providing a means of communication by which at comparatively-small Cost a moderate. sired community or colony may be established, say, 100 miles from the railway, in many of our Overseas Dominions, and whilst small will depend on the aeroplane, and when grown large enough will have its railway. In other words, the new science of flying may be regarded as a means of development, as a feeder for the railways existing, or withont laying a road at all, either for motorcars or railways, until developments warrant them. Certainly on the start of such a service a Government subsidy or guarantee will be an absolute necessity."
A Practical Machine.
The writer of the paper limits his forecast to pea sibilities with what he terms " practical machines," and these he defines as. machines with high speed, law landing speed, and good weight-carrying" capacity He considers conveyance by air a commercial pro position for three principal reasons: (1) It is fastei
than any other means of transport; it is safe ; it is not too costly.
London to Petrograd or Constantinople. •
Great emphasis is thrown upon the fact that Paris is brought within 3 hours of London instead of 7, Rome within 12/ hours instead of 42; and either' Petrograd or Constantinople within a day's journey.,
Running Costs in the Air.
The running costs in the air, for such trips, are stated to be—presumably inclusive only of petrol and lubricating oil and grease—the following:— Costs in Detail.
The foregoing! costs are for machines which are capable of .flying considerably over 100 miles an hour, but the following costs are only based on performances of 80. m.p.h.:— .
AERIAL SERVICE, LoNnow—Panis. One Machine Each Way Daily,
Carrying 2500 lb., less petrol and oil and pilot, for, • say, 300 miles :— .
At £3 10s. per week equals £15 per day for
600 miles .. ... 0 6 Pilots 3 flights one Way per week per pilot requires for 14 flightsper week 41 pilots, reserve, say, 1/ pilots, equals 6 pilots at £500 per annum each. equals 23000 per annum, say, £8 5s. per day for 600 miles 031;
Running Expenses 24 , gallons petrol and 5 gallons of oil, taking speed at 100 miles per hour ... 0 8
Depreciation and Repairs—
Allowing complete overhaul every 100
• hours, flying 300 miles per day at 100 miles per hour equals overhaul-every 33 days. 25 per cent. off two machines at £2500 each equals 11250 equals £38 per day for 600 miles
Overhead Charges • Management ... • £3,000
• Clerical work, etc. ... ... 13600
Advertising, etc., each end 6,000 Offices, ete. 1,000 Contingencies 2,400 Fare of E5 pet Trip by Air from London to Paris.
Mr. Holt Thomas next proceeds to work out an income and expenditure account, in respect of a passenger service between Paris and London, and in the reverse direction, for 80,m.p.h., and 2000 lb. net load (12 pv,ssengers). He contends that a profit can he made on. a charge of 25 per passenger per journey, but ,shows that an average of more than nine passengers per trip is necessary, on that basis, for financial success. He similarly calculates 210 per passenger between London and Marseilles, and £25 per passenger between London and Constantinople. For such a service he places the cost at 3s. per mile, compared with 4s. 8d. per mile for the larger and speedier type of machine in respect of which we have given his tables in ext.enso.
Safety, Wind, Fog and Landing.
Mr. Holt Thomas is most insistent upon the safety oF flying. He expresses a wish, in the course of his paper, that he were at liberty to give the answers to the two following questions :—How many machines cross the Channel daily? How many machines fall into it ? . He asks for acceptance of the point of view that -flying is less dangerous than many means of cernmunieation by land and sea, which view we are inclined to accept from records within our own knowledge. He Points out that a wind of 39 miles an hour or more is recorded only 12 days in the year in the South-East of England, and for only 42 hours on those days. At Holyhead, Which is One of the worst instances, the record is 24 days. Such a wind has practically no effect on a modern aeroplane.
As to fog, omitting Scilly from the records, on only 12 days in the year on the south coast at 7 a.m., and on only 5 days at 1 p.m., are fogs recorded. The records also show 5 days at 6 p.m., and 4 days at 0 p.m. in the year. For London, the records show 22 days out of 365 days at 7 a.m. One of Mr. Holt Thomas's proposed solutions for landing in fogs is to send up a small kite-balloon carrying no passengers,..to a height of, say, 1500 ft., i.e., above the fog, in order to indicate the location of . a landing ground.
He examines-the cost of renting landing grounds at considerable length, for all parts of the world, and in the latter portion of his paper points out that by aerial transport, Ceylon becomes 2,i days from London, Tokio 41 days, Sydney 5 days, Cape Town 31 days,-New York 2 days, Vancouver 3 days, etc. He forecasts a series of landing grounds from London to Tokio at 10-mile intervals; presumably reckoning the sea as a good one all the time 1 Military v. Commercial Types. •
He cOnsiders that aeroplanes have developed along entirely wrong lines so far, from a -commercial point of view, for the following reasons : 1. Excessive climb demanded in a fighting machine, and power thrown away to obtain this. 2. Excessive attention devoted to visibility, gun positions, etc. 3. Excessive strength for fighting nianceuvres, etc.
Conclusions.
He proceeda, in regard to development of commercial designs, as under :—
" The present unpleasant features of an aeroplane, i.e.' noise, oscillation, cold, cramped positions, are all due to war design and can all be eliminated in .a passenger-carrying aeroplane without reducing its
speed very much, but only by sacrificing climb, visibility, guns, etc "In criticising the cost of running an aeroplane service and comparing it with train service or ships, one ought to consider how very unpractical and useless the first trains or ships were, and how exceedingly unpleasant travelling in them must have been Passengers in the first train, I believe, were just as -cramped as they are to-day in an aeroplane. The oscillation was greater, they were covered with smoke and cinders and the speed was limited to the rite at which a man could walk in front with a bell. The early ships were equally unstable, and it was a very doubtful point when -a ship set out if it would arrive at its destination, if ever. If one reads any of the accounts of the early voyages one is struck by the fact that very frequently they set out from a place and returned six months later, having met adverse weather, and it was the custom to say Masses for anybody who thought of doing anything so hazardous as going a sea voyage.".