1 September 1927 Leading Article in the “Baghdad Times”: 8 September 1927 The Acting Manager of Junkers in Teheran, Mr. E.C. Ettel called on Sir Robert H. Clive. Mr. Ettel asked Clive whether he had seen the Baghdad Times article of 1st September. On hearing that Clive had not seen the article, Ettel said that the article was very friendly to Junkers and the writer expressed the hope that the Junkers service from FLYING TO PERSIA Although, owing to the cholera scare, communications between Iraq and Persia are necessarily restricted at the present time, so far as passenger traffic is concerned, it is none the less interesting to read of the success of the Junkers Aviation Company, which has carried some passengers from the Iraq frontier to Teheran. This service has worked in Persia (like the Imperial Airways service from Basrah to Cairo) with an efficiency of 100 per cent, and the company is naturally very proud of the fact. Persia, it should be remembered, is a very mountainous country, and there are many pitfalls for the unwary aviator; the 500 miles from the Iraq frontier to the Caspian Sea is marked by one mountain range after another, many of them eight thousand feet above sea level, while some are much higher. For this reason the Junkers machines have often to fly at very great altitudes, and their passengers obtain magnificent panoramic views of a country which is justly noted for its wonderful mountain scenery. It is just about six months since the Junkers service was opened by a flight from Pahlevi (the old Enzeli) to Teheran. Since then the pilots have made 459 separate flights, and they have covered a distance of well over 50,000 miles in 636 hours, carrying 935 passengers. The freight carried, including mails and passengers’ baggage, amounted to 17,424,915 kilos. There has been no accident even of the slightest description, and the service has been marked by great punctuality. Six months after the opening of the service Professor Junkers sent an experienced engineer to Teheran to supervise the erection of a new and thoroughly up-to-date aerodrome. Personally we hope that before long it will be found possible to extend the Junkers service from Qasr-i-Shirin to Baghdad, which would make the air link between Teheran and Egypt even more efficient than it is at present. We write without official information, but it seems to us that the admission of Persian service aeroplanes into Iraq would be much more likely to persuade the Persian Government to withdraw its objections to the Persian Gulf air route to India than a great deal of diplomatic correspondence. The modern tendency is to discourage unnecessary frontier restrictions, and it is an anomaly, nine years after the Armistice, with air services operating from Teheran and Baghdad, that travellers should still have to cover by train and car 127 miles of the 1,350 miles between Teheran and Cairo.”
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