Commercial Aviation in the American Mediterranean

O NE of the great advantages of the airplane as compared with ground transport is the possibility of using it over land and water. There are, of course, different types of planes for flying over land and for flying over water; but whereas seaplanes are rather infrequently used on short overland portions of airways and amphibians are seen on only a few airlines, day by day landplanes fly over a considerable number of miles of water. On routes with scheduled air services the distances to be flown over water by landplanes are generally small:1 it is, however, just such a connection that causes annoyance and additional expense when ground transport only is used. If you travel, or ship goods, from San Francisco to Bucarest, it will generally be of no great importance that you, or your goods, twice have to change the means of transport, but between London and Brussels the matter assumes a different aspect. In some cases expensive engineering works have been undertaken to secure, so far as possible, unbroken land or water passage on important traffic routes; for example, the viaduct to Key West, the Hindenburg Dike to the Isle of Sylt, the new bridge over the Little Belt, and the Panama, Welland, Suez, and Kiel Canals. There is no need for such constructions in transport aviation. Now there are certain regions where the interpenetration of land and water assumes especially large proportions and where, therefore, the plane may best show its superiority over ground transport. These regions are the European, Australasian, and American Mediterraneans, which together have an area about one and one half times that of the United States. To this area must be added a certain portion of the adjacent continents; for the water surfaces do not create any traffic, they only carry it: they are the deserts or voids to be bridged between the land regions, which furnish the objects of traffic. There is not only a hydrological but also a traffic catchment area of the Mediterraneans, the extent of which, however, would be difficult to evaluate. Within the M[editerraneans the distribution of land and water is of prime importance for transport aviation; for peninsulas, islands, and archipelagoes are not only outliers of the trafficcreating continents but also most useful steppingstones, reducing the over-water distances to be bridged by nonstop flights. Instead

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