Long distance air travel

Following my visit to the Canadian Aviation Museum I came across the following information  which I thought I would share with you.

The R100 duly departed Cardington for Canada on the 29th July, 1930.   The ship took what was called the Great Circle route, which covered 3,300 miles, and arrived at St. Hubert airport, Montreal, seventy-eight hours later, having shown an average speed of 42 mph  She docked on to the mooring mast, which had been specially erected for her, and for twelve days was the toast of Quebec, attracting huge attention, a hundred thousand visitors, numerous press and magazine articles, and even a specially written song.  She made short passenger flights to Ottawa, Toronto and Niagara Falls, and could have sold the tickets for them ten times over.  She finally left Canada on the 13th August and arrived home at Cardington after a flight of just fifty-seven and a half hours.

It was assumed airships would. be the long-distance carriers of the future.  It would never be possible to carry enough passengers and cargo in aeroplanes over those long distances to cover the expense.  Aeroplanes must remain fast, short-hop carriers, like the 'Silver Wing' service to Paris.  For the first time, meals and drinks were served to the passengers on board the Armstrong Whitworth Argosy, but that was about the limit of the comforts that could be offered.  On an airship, of course, there could be separate restaurants, viewing decks, promenades and even sleeping cabins, necessary to such long journeys.  But until the airships were ready, they had to do the best they could.  The new Imperial Airways service to Karachi which began on Saturday, 30th March, 1929.

The whole journey was to take seven days - a marked improvement on the weeks it took to journey to India by ship.  The first leg was a flight from Croydon via Paris to Basle on the AW Argosy City of Glasgow.  Passengers then took the overnight train - the Alps were in the way, and aeroplanes could not fly over mountains - from Basle to Genoa, where on Sunday, the 31st, they boarded the Short Calcutta flying-boat City of Athens to fly via Rome to Naples.  On Monday they hopped from Naples to Corfu to Athens.  On Tuesday they flew from Athens via Suda Bay in Crete to the seaport of Tobruk, where on Wednesday they transferred to a DH66 Hercules, City of Jerusalem, to fly to Alexandria.  Then followed the most intriguing part of the flight.  To get to Basra on the Persian Gulf, the Hercules had to cross hundreds of miles of desert.  There was no way for a pilot to navigate   except from landmark to landmark, and in the desert there were no roads, rivers or buildings, just trackless wastes of sand.  So to guide them, a gigantic furrow had been ploughed all the way from Palestine to Baghdad, hundreds of miles long, probably the longest furrow that had ever been ploughed anywhere in history.  Following this, the DH66 reached Baghdad on Thursday, but there was delayed by a sandstorm before taking off again for Basra.  On the Friday it followed the coast of the Gulf via Bushire, Lingeh and Jask, and on the Saturday completed the coastwise journey via Gwadar to Karachi.

Remarkable, what a feat. 

Phil has just left for a trip to India - hopefully it will take just eight hours!!