Canada has found a highly successful use for aëroplanes in prospecting the Labrador timber country. A group of machines returned from an exploration with valuable photographs and maps of hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of forest land. Aërial fire patrols, also, have been sent out over the forests. While no important air route for passenger carrying is yet utilized in Canada, there is a certain amount of private flying, and air journeys for business purposes are common. Plans have been prepared for a regular service between Newfoundland and cities on the mainland, thus saving many hours over the time schedules perpetrated by the little Newfoundland railway.
In the South African Union, where the railway system by no means corresponds with the vast distances, many passengers and mails are carried by air from Johannesburg to Pretoria, Maritzburg, Durban and Cape Town. Later, when the services over these routes are better organized, they will doubtless be extended to important centers in Rhodesia, the East Africas and what was German South-West Africa.
Aëroplanes in India take passengers over the route Calcutta-Simla in twelve to fourteen hours of cool roominess, as compared with forty-two hours of stuffy oppressiveness on a train. Other Indian air routes in preparation are Calcutta-Bombay, Calcutta-Darjeeling and Calcutta-Puri. The air fare in India averages about 11 cents a mile.
Aërodromes and landing grounds are already prepared between Egypt and India, and several machines have made the journey from Cairo to Delhi, via Damascus, the Syrian Desert, Bagdad, Bandar Abbas and Karachi. Elsewhere in the East—the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, Borneo, Java and China—similar routes are planned. The whole of Eastern Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town, has been mapped out for the use of aircraft, with landing grounds at short intervals.
So much for accomplishment during the past year. What the future and the near-future have in store for aëronautics is problematical, and any detailed analysis must be conjecture. The general trend of development during the next two years may be forecast, however, with a fair degree of accuracy.
Anybody who blends sane imagination with some knowledge of the history of aëronautics must realize that what has been achieved is very little in comparison with what can be achieved. It is unnecessary to make trite comparisons with the first stages of steam locomotives or motor cars.
Yet, it is folly to expect an air age now. Its coming will be delayed by the necessity of slow, painstaking research, and by the fact that in the countries which are encouraging aviation to the greatest degree, capital is no longer fluid and plentiful, and money in substantial sums cannot be risked on magnificent experiments. The cost of building fleets of dirigibles and hosts of air terminals, for example, must be enormous; and until it has been demonstrated beyond question that they will be paying propositions, financiers and investors are unlikely to be interested in their concrete possibilities on a large scale.
Unless some startling innovation—a much cheaper fuel for example, or a successful helicopter—revolutionizes commercial aviation, its near-future is unlikely to stray beyond the extension of airways over distances of about five hundred to two thousand miles. These are likely to be covered mostly by heavier-than-air craft, although, as in Germany, dirigibles will have their place.
Extension of air traffic is especially probable in industrial and agricultural countries of large area, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, India and the South American republics. Another projected development with immediate possibilities is the linking of regions that are separated by a comparatively narrow expanse of water. Obvious examples, in addition to Britain and France, are England and Ireland, the Mediterranean coast of France and the Mediterranean coast of Africa, and Florida and Cuba.