History
S. Instone & Company Limited, a shipping company set up by Sir Samuel Instone, had operated a private service from Cardiff via London (Hounslow Heath Aerodrome) to Paris - Le Bourget Airport since 1919. In April 1920 it ran the service between London and Paris as a public service using the name Instone Air Line. In 1920 it was the first airline to transport a racehorse and on 1 January 1922 the company introduced uniforms to its pilots and staff; Instone are believed to be the first airline to do so. It started a London to Cologne - Butzweilerhof Airport service in May 1922. It stopped operating the London-Paris route in October 1922 due to competition. In 1923, a Government committee recommended that the main British airlines should merge, to establish one, financially strong, airline, and to enable it to undertake the necessary expansions. Following this recommendation, Imperial Airways was created on 1 April 1924, absorbing the assets and routes of Handley Page Transport, Instone Air Line, Daimler Airway and British Marine Air Navigation Co Ltd.
There is a history of the air line: Early Birds - Air Transport Memories 1919-1924 by Alfred Instone (published by Western Mail & Echo, Cardiff, 1938) containing a number of photographs.
Read more about this topic: Instone Air Line
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)