COMMERCIAL AVIATION.
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THE PRINCIPAL recent events bearing upon the progress of commercial aviation have been intimately connected with the development of the Imperial air routes. . The Advisory Committee on Civil Aviation. has -issued a report on this subject which appears to be on sound lines and perhaps stands a better chance of being acted upon than would have been the ease had. it advocated more whole-hearted measures.
Just at present the talk is all of economy, and it is to be feareer that we do not always recognize that economy and parsimony are not necessarily the same thing. The purpose for which we advocate economy is the payment of our national debts, and if, by incurring expenditure to-day we can so far increase the value of our property as to regain our capital many times in the near future, such a process is surely good economy. The organization of the Imperial air routes is a case in point. By their means the value of the Empire can be immensely increased. Land which can, at present, be had for next to nothing, because of its distance from centres of populations can, in effect, be brought nearer, and soaincreneed in value. It is, however, useless at the moment to pursue this line of argument further ; we have to face facts as they are; and one of the most evident of these facts is that very high expenditure on the prompt development of long-distance air routes would not be sanctioned by the Government. Consequeltly, theYAdvisory Committee was probably right in recommending that only one such route should be organized as quickly as possible for the purpose of gaming experience. For this purpose they select the route from Egypt to India as being that which offers the best chances of early success. Obviously, the intention all along would be to extend this route to Australia, and the next big enterprise undertaken would be the route to South Africa.
England -to Australia.
While we have been deliberating and arriving at these conclusions, Captain Ross Smith has shown how completely practical is the aerial journey from England to Australia. By completing that journey in about 28 days, he put to his credit a very wonderful achievement, perhaps only rendered possible by his thorough knowledge of many of the aerodromes in the East. It is gratifying that this record ahould have been established by an Australian aviator with an English machine and engine. A little morecdelay and the Frenchman Poulet might well have get in ahead of us. The makers of the Vickers-Vimy are to be congratulated on this second great piece of evidence of the marvellous reliability of their machines.
The route followed by Ross Smith was, so far as we can judge, just about the same as that which will presently become the regular route to Australia, and will be organized as such. Some of the main points touched were Paris, Lyons, Rome, Taranto, Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Karachi, Delhi, Calcutta, Rangoon, Bangkok, Singapore, and Java. The trip was an adventurous one. The aviator had to fight against a monsoon, and the machine narrowly escaped serious damage on more than one occasion when landing and when starting from the ground. The time taken is, of course, no measure of the time which will be occupied when the whole route is properly organized and drvided into stages, each worked by its own machines and men. These long-distanee journeys will never be commercially undertaken by one machine and man travelling the whole distance. Each pilot employed will be trained to a thoroughly expert knowledge of his own section, and each section will have its own fleet of machines.
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Government Assistance.
In working out the Imperial air routes on a truly commercial basis, some measure of Government assistance must be taken for granted; without it, the capital commitment will be far too great for private enterprise to tackle the proposition. At the very least, the Government must provide and organize the air ports and the meteorological and wireless services. In the opinion of the Advisory Conunittee, this is the function which the Government should perform. The alternative of actual Government ownership of services is rejected because!this method would probably show lack of initiative, and would be insufficently speculative, seeing that a Government undertaking is open to such very wide and damaging criticism as to render caution always essential. Such caution is not consistent with a development which in the early stages requires the guiding instinct of the born pioneer and speculator. Another alternative—a sort of half-way house between Government enterprise and private enterprise —is the formation of a chartered company. This idea has its attractions, particularly because it would ensure a single and consistent development of policy. It would keep the business out of the hand of a, private monopoly, and it could be so arranged as to give proper support to established aircraft contractors. On the other hand, it might, and the Committee think that it would, tend to become stereotyped in method and averse to the entertainment of new ideas. Probably everyone will agree that, in a, matter of this kind, any organization likely to develop a system of bureaucratic control must be rejected, however attractive it may appear to be frosn other points of view.
The Vickers-Rolls Gift.
Thanks to the courtesy of the Director of the Science Museum at South Kensington, I had the pleasure of being present last week at the ceremony which marked the opening of the new aeronautical wing of the museum and the presentation to the nation by Messrs. Vickers, Ltd., mall Messrs. Rolls-Royce, Ltd., of the Vickers-Virny aeroplane which made that momentous and historical flight on June 14th and 13th, when the Atlantic was crossed direct from shore to shore in 15 hours 57 minutes. The .gift was a magnificent one, something which posterity will appreciate more than we do. I do not, for one moment, believe that the absence of Government officials associated with the aerial movement was due to a desire to inflict a studied insult on the donors, but the string of apologies for absence did not ring sincere, and it certainly made that sinister impression upon some of the guesto. However, that is one of the idioayncracies of the nation ; we keep our own enthusiasm on Me and we pour the ice water down the backs of the pioneers and the far-sighted. Thank Heaven, there are a few who leaven the lump and, so, prevent us from being an entire nation of boors.
Few realize the precision with which the VickersRolls-Royce effort was carried out. The component parts of a standard Vickers-Virny bomber were not released by Govenment until April 7th. The alterations in the matter of fuel and oil capacity were effected, giving a margin of 30 per cent., and the parts left London by steamer on May 15th, arriving at St. John's, Newfoundland, on May 24th. Assembling and testing occupied three weeks, and the flight was commenced on June 14th. This time-table seems more marvellous now than it did at the time, because it is more comolete, and it is a wonderful testimony to the skill of the designers, makers, and testing staff of both Vickers and Rolls-Royce. In its temporary home, the m.a.chine is not displayed to fair advantage,
pillars preventing a full view of it. BEMBRIDGE.