Air Communications and the Far East

Abstract

CULTURAL and commercial relationships have always been affected by the speed and frequency of communications, and consequently they may be expected to be markedly influenced in the future by the growth of air transport. In the Far East this influence is likely to be profound and to follow an interesting direction. Up to the present the Far East has been aeronautically one of the less well developed parts of the world. It has seen nothing comparable, for example, with the swift progress of high-speed mail and passenger services in America, with the progress in large-sized aeroplanes and flying boats in England, or with the movement that has been made on the British Empire and Dutch air lines towards securing an economical return from passenger and mail air services. Yet it is in the nature of air transport that the part of the world which feels its effects last is likely, in the end, to feel them most deeply. Air lines may be said to be creeping out from Europe and America towards the Pacific, and their utility is increasing as they go. The Pacific is the ultimate aim upon which the great continental air transport systems of both America and Europe are converging, and their value to themselves and to the world becomes greater as they move toward that common junction and objective. A simple proportionate table based upon the ordinary Imperial Airways service to Singapore will help to illustrate this relationship between value and extension. From London to Baghdad, a distance of 3,241 miles by the air route, takes seven days by surface transport. By air it takes four days. From London to Singapore, a distance of 8,485 miles, takes twenty-two days by surface transport and ten days by air. For the shorter distance, three days are saved by using air transport, and for the longer distance twelve days. The saving over the long distance, therefore, is nearly fifty-five per cent of the time taken by surface transport, and over the shorter distance only forty-three per cent. In general terms, air transport over the longer distance is of about twelve per cent greater time-saving value. On the faster schedules which are now being put into operation by