The
legendary pioneers
During
our return flight through Africa, we spent one night at the Hôtel de la
Poste
in Saint Louis in
northwestern Senegal. It was in this hotel where Jean Mermoz,
the legendary French pilot stayed
between two South Atlantic “Aéropostale”
crossings.
The
history:
The first
flying postmen have sometimes paid the price of their life,
for a fantastic adventure.
Today,
flying across the world with commercial airliners is comfortable easy,
and
seams now to be a
pure for formality. The millions of daily flight passengers
can do this today, thanks to the early precursors
in commercial aviation. Some
of these for sighting flight pioneers were looking for possible ways to
approach Europe with South America already as early as 1918.
The
step-by-step
realization of this dream took then the best part of the following 10
years.
The first part
of this long distance, France- Morocco was regularly linked
commercially, starting from the 9th of
March 1919, whereas the leg between
Casablanca and Dakar in Senegal was inaugurated on the 1st of
June 1925.
Three
years later, Toulouse in France was then air linked commercially with
Buenos Aires,
Argentina in
South America. With different extensions to this initial route
between Europe and South America,
it was the possible to establish the then
longest commercial air route (13’000 KM), over flying nine countries
in three
continents. Up to the end of the regular flights on that initial route
in 1940,
there were 256 flights
recorded across the South Atlantic. The history tells,
that during those initial years of commercial air service,
121 people-,
Pilots-, Radio operators-, Mechanics, have disappeared and lost their
lives.
Jean Mermoz,
possibly the most famous between them all, had realized the first
ever, non- stop South Atlantic
crossing in 20 hours between Senegal and Brazil
in 1930.
Flying with only very rudimentary navigational equipment such as a
compass, a sextant and a watch at time,
Jean Mermoz, no doubt played an
important part, to create the profession of airline pilots.
