THE AIR AGE
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR was with considerable surprise that I read the article " The Air Age " in your last issue, for it is unusual to find in such a journal as yours statements so entirely misleading as some of those contained in this article.
The comparative statistics as between Great Britain and the U.S. and Germany, far from proving your contention of our inferiority in commercial aviation, merely go to show how magnificent has been our effort in the face of all sorts of handicaps. Your comparisons are misleading because they fail to take account of, amongst many other things- 1. Total populations of the countries quoted.
2. Area of territory_ which can be served commercially by aircraft, and
3. CoMPatative utility of aircraft as against other Methods of transport.
The first point speaks for itself and needs no elaboration ; it is 'the second which strikes at the heart of commercial aviation in England. Save in exceptional or urgent cases there are few occasions When it is not cheaper and more simple to send goods, mails or passengers by rail or road anywhere in England than by aeroplane, and the few excep- tions, being outside the financial possibilities of all but the few, would not justify any fixed commercial service.
In Germany and the U.S., on the contrary, distances are sufficiently great as to make the timetactor - favour the
aeroplane while tending to level up the expense factor.
_ Furthermore, particularly in the U.S., it is possible to fly very great distances without crossing a frontier with its attendant vexatious delays, or flying over water in a land machine, and more important still, such journeys can be arranged in easy relay stages, thus obviating all but ordinary (or extraordinary) flying risks.
These are but a few—probably not even the most important —of the handicaps under which British commercial aviation suffers and must suffer for many years to come, and it would be thought that even the most elementary knowledge of the facts would have prevented that astonishing statement in your article that " on some happy day " the entire R.A.F. will be able to beat its bombs into suit-cases.
I feel sure that you did not, for the purposes of this article, intentionally depart from your usual fair and impartial judgment of affairs which makes the Spectator comments so valuable, but I do feel that on this occasion you have dealt very unfairly with a rising branch of British industry which badly needs all the support it can obtain.—I am, Sir, &c., " R. N." Carbis Bay, Cornwall.
[If our correspondent will read the Parliamentary Report on the Air Estimates he will see that our statement of the backwardness of commercial flying in England is mild com- pared to that of experts such as Captain Guest. Not for a moment do we suggest that our pilots or machines are inferior, nor that flying in England does not suffer from geographical handicaps (nothing in our article should have led our correspondent to think so), but there can be no doubt that the public is in need of enlightenment as regards " what is and what might be " in British aviation. We hoped we had made this cleat. As to the possibility of world peace, we do feel we are in possession of " the elementary knowledge of the facts."—En, Spedator.]
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