The Air Liner Disaster Our sense of such a disaster
as that which befell the Imperial Airways finer ' City of Liverpool ' was heightened by its suddenness, its unaccountability and by the fact that all the passengers and crew, fifteen persons in all, were killed. But it will not destroy confidence in this form of travel. The public to-day has little excuse for not knowing that flying on the regular air routes, and on those of Imperial Airways in partieular, belongs to quite a different category from flying in the Air Force, which demands the constant taking of risks, or from the stunt flying of record-breakers. Such 'an accident as that to the ' City of Liverpool ' is the terrible exception which proves the rule. In the whole time since the establishment of Imperial Airways in 1924 there have only been six accidents to their liners (including that of last Tuesday) involving injury to passengers, and during this period 10 million miles have been flown and a quarter of a million passengers carried. This extra- ordinary record is due to the excellence of the machines, to the severity of tests and inspection, and to the high skill of the pilots employed. Travel by air is still safer than travel by road, as the premiums charged by insurance companies in each case show.
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