The North Atlantic Air Service Sir Philip Sassoon, Under-Secretary for
Air, announced in the House of Commons last week that plans had at length been drawn up for an experimental North Atlantic air mail service. Experimental flights are to be made by Imperial Airways and Pan-American Airways, and when the experimental stage is passed a regular service will be maintained by a joint company, formed by Imperial Airways and two companies nominated by Canada and the Irish Free State, with the co-operation of Pan- American Airways. The company will receive a subsidy, of which 20 per cent. will be paid by Canada, 5 per cent. by the Irish Free State, and the rest by Great Britain. No doubt it will be some time before a regular service is practicable. Pan-American Airways has already had experience of the difficulties involved in operating the trans-Pacific service over a route far less formidable, though longer, than the North Atlantic ; and there is no aeroplane yet built capable of making regularly a non-stop Atlantic flight loaded with mails. But the difficulties will certainly be overcome ; the agreement now reached is a striking example of how technical progress, while the world is politically more and more divided, demands an ever increasing degree of inter- national and inter-Dominion co-operation.
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