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IMPERIAL AIRWAYS
LONDON-PARIS SERVICE
In a recent issue of The Tatler the air correspondent of that paper - Major Oliver Stewart, M.C., A.F.C. - paid the following tribute to Imperial Airways' London-Paris service. Major Stewart is one of the most experienced aeronautical journalists in this country, and is the author of certain standard text-books on flying.
'To-day, he who deliberately travels between London and Paris, for instance, by any other way than by the air way can only be compared with those enthusiasts who lie for long periods of time stretched at full length upon beds composed of a great number of sharp iron spikes pointing upwards, or who drive needles, pins, and other penetrating instruments into various parts of their bodies - not, be it noted, in order to prove the durability, long life, or sound construction of their bodies, but simply to hurt themselves. Those who travel internationally by other ways than the air way are deliberately and unnecessarily hurting themselves.
'I do not claim that the Imperial Airways way to Paris is better than any other way solely on my own authority. I claim it on the authority of those who recently made their way to Paris for the Salon de l'Aviation by Imperial Airways' aeroplanes. Among them were some of the most distinguished engineers in Great Britain, men conversant with aircraft and aero-engines, intensely critical and able and ready to notice immediately any faults or imperfections in the service. They and the Air Ministry officials, pilots and business men who went over to the Salon, provided probably the most critical and aeronautically the best-informed group of passengers Imperial Airways has ever had to cope with. I took pains to gather the opinions of these competent judges both in the air on the way out and back and in Paris during the Show.
A UNANIMOUS VERDICT
'The opinion was unanimous that air travel, as it is presented by the British company to-day on the London-Paris service, is the best form of travel yet devised. It is the quickest, the most comfortable, the most interesting and the simplest . . . it was unanimously agreed that there never has been a finer transport service of any kind. . . .
'The skill of the pilots is beyond praise in the truest sense. That is to say, they make the flying of a large transport machine, carrying, perhaps, thirty-eight passengers, seem simple, ordinary and uneventful. They make it seem so ordinary a thing that its successful accomplishment does not seem to call for praise. Probably only those, who, like myself, used to ply backwards and forwards across the Channel in 1916, piloting new machines over to the Expeditionary Force, can fully understand how great is the advance to the flying technique of to-day. In those days every other trip was an adventure: in these, no trip is an adventure'.
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