AIR ROUTE FROM CAIRO TO CAPE TOWN ON THE WAY

The stepping-stones of the great all-red route from Cairo to Cape Town have been actually placed, and the pioneer machines are now on the way, Major-general Sir F. H. Sykes stated last night. The Controller-general of Civil Aviation was addressing a distinguished company of members of the Royal Geographical Society, which included the Prince of Wales, and he gave his audience a fascinating description of a route “stretching through the seasons from Cairo south over the vast Soudan, on through the huge and tangled stretches of equatorial Africa, and across the veld to Cape Town.” To have established a chain of aerodromes through the length of the Continent of Africa, a distance by existing methods of travel of 6,223 miles, to have successfully contended with the geographical and physical difficulties, was no small achievement, he pointed out, and yet such a route actually exists. And as an illustration of the possibilities of aerial routes when spanning such undeveloped country as is to be found in Central Africa, General Sykes pointed out that Mwansa to Tabora would involve a trek of anything from five to fifteen days, with all the attendant difficulties of porters, &c. The aeroplane will probably accomplish the same stage in about two hours. The total distance covered by the new route is 5,206 miles, and the longest stage without a prepared emergency ground is Abercorn to N’dola – 341 miles. On the entire route there are no fewer than forty-three prepared aerodromes, giving forty-two stages of an average length of just over 124 miles each. Of the forty-three aerodromes, twenty-four are at present organised as petrol and oil stations, giving an average journey of 226 miles between refuelling bases. He hoped and felt sure that British enterprise having secured the blue ribands of the Atlantic and Australian flights, the third great flight, from Cairo to Cape Town, would also be achieved by a citizen of the Empire, and he wished that Joseph Chamberlain and Cecil Rhodes could have seen the air-route map of Africa.