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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The 'Solent' flying-boat service to Nyasaland, 1949-1950
Author:Baker, ColinISNI
Year:1995
Periodical:The Society of Malawi Journal
Volume:48
Issue:2
Pages:47-69
Language:English
Notes:biblio. refs.
Geographic terms:Malawi
Central Africa
Subjects:air transport
History, Archaeology
history
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/29778738
Abstract:For a brief, twelve-month period, from November 1949 to October 1950, a large number of people left and arrived in Nyasaland (present-day Malawi) via Cape Maclear. This was an unlikely point of arrival and departure for international travellers because it was a somewhat isolated and relatively inaccessible spot on the southwest shore of Lake Malawi. Yet for a year it was the place at which the flying-boat service between Southampton in Britain and Vaaldam near Johannesburg in South Africa made a regular stopover on both its southbound and its northbound journeys. The present article examines the way in which the flying-boat service came about, the part played in it by Nyasaland's Governor, Sir Geoffrey Colby, the use to which the service was put, the experiences of pilots, crew and passengers, and the reasons for ending the service. The long-term significance of the service lay not in gaining publicity and boosting the tourist industry, but in creating a precedent: a direct international air service, in pressing Nyasaland's claims for aviation development in Central Africa, in providing a lever with which to prise from external sources financing for modernizing and extending the country's airport facilities, in stimulating the market, and in beginning to wean the Nyasaland travelling public away from rail and sea travel. Note, ref.
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