Page 142 - KBHA Bulletin 10

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minute flight over the surroundings without incident. (Cape Times, 16/2/1920).

The opening flight to Johannesburg, on Sunday 15 February 1920, was heralded as the
first and the longest ever attempted within South Africa. In addition to the two pilots

there were nine passengers and a large quantity of mails and luggage. Their departure at

6.29 a.m. was witnessed by a large crowd. The flight, however, was dogged by mishaps.
First, a faulty compass compounded by cloud cover caused the plane to go off course

and they put down in the veld near Sutherland to ascertain where they were. Then,
having got airborne again, a petrol leak forced a landing south of Laingsburg. After 160

gallons of petrol had been gathered and the plane refuelled they got airborne only four
days later at 9 a.m. on the Thursday morning. Beaufort West was reached by 10.50 a.m.

and at 1.30 p.m. they set off for Kimberley. They were barely airborne when a snapping

sound was heard – a rudder post had worked loose – and another, more violent, forced
landing was required four miles beyond the town. This time the damage to the plane

was severe: the undercarriage, wings and propellers were smashed, but the passengers

were uninjured. Further progress with the flight was impossible and the plane was sold
to local people as scrap. The passengers returned to Cape Town by train where they

arrived on the morning of Saturday 21 February, after an unsuccessful overall journey
of six days. It had not been an auspicious start and, though the Company played it down

and used the other aircraft to complete a contracted advertising campaign, Handley Page
SA never recovered and was liquidated later that year. The parent Handley Page

Transport Ltd. in the UK would eventually be amalgamated, in 1924, with three other

small airlines to form Imperial Airways.

Air transportation of mails was revived some five years later, on 2 March 1925, when
the SAAF, which had been formed on 1 February 1920, introduced the Government

Experimental Air Mail Service operating from Young’s Field. This was initially
successful, but was not a sustained commercial success and was terminated on 16 June

of that year.