Home Travel by Air
An old but serviceable four-engined De Havilland passenger plane took off from Croydon last Monday at 9.a.m. and arrived at Speke Aerodrome, Liverpool, hours later. It was the inaugural flight of a daily service to Liverpool, connecting with the services to Belfast and the Isle of Man, initiated by Railway Air Services. This is a beginning only. It is proposed to open up 34 routes within this country and external routes which would serve too Continental cities, under a plan designed to link up road, rail, sea and air in partnership between the railway and shipping companies and other interests. Railway Air Services are to be congratulated on starting now. There are not at present many suitable machines
available, and it will be some time before aeroplanes of the type needed can be produced in large numbers. But to have the service itself in -being, even if at first it is only a skeleton service, will be an incentive to production and a perpetual reminder to the Government of the need of preparing for an early switch:over to civil aircraft manufacture. It is not likely- that the limited distances between great cities in this island will long be a deterrent to the use of internal services. The war has made people air-minded, and to many business people the halving of the time taken in a journey between London and Liverpool will be a consideration ; though it is evident that thought will have to be given to bringing aerodromes nearer to the centres of towns. For the full development of an internal service a link-up with an external service was obviously essential. Any. traveller from the Continent bound for the North of England or for Scotland will be disposed to complete his journey by air if there is a connecting plane to take him on.
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