22 OCTOBER 1927, Page 3

Miss Ruth Elder and her navigator, Captain Haldeman, were lucky

to be picked up by a steamer when their engine failed and they descended on the sea about five hundred miles north of the Azores. An oil-pipe had broken, and the pistons of the engine might have seized at any moment. When the captain of the steamer was trying to hoist the aeroplane on board it burst into flames and was destroyed. It is to be hoped that we shall not be subjected during the corning winter to more of these painful thrills. We should be the last to disparage any kind of human daring, even the most risky, from which any knowledge is to be gained ; but so far as we are informed, very little, if anything, is to be learned from these Atlantic flights. Those who have learnt most do not return to tell the tale.