CityLife

Air we go - for a flight into history books

PIONEER: AV Roe with the original triplane, which first flew in 1909

IT wasn’t the most comfortable or the cheapest way to get from Manchester to Blackpool, but it was certainly the quickest.

On May 26, 1919, two Avro 504K biplanes, veterans of the First World War, took off from Alexandra Park aerodrome at Hough End fields, Chorlton, Manchester, with two passengers each – a colonial civil servant on leave, a superintendent of the Manchester GPO, a newspaper publisher and a Daily Sketch photographer.

The Avros flew off to Blackpool and into the history books as the start of Britain’s first scheduled airline service.

“The rear cockpit had one seat, but the transport company made the cockpit slightly bigger and put two seats in it,” says Nick Forder, air and space curator at Manchester Museum of Science and Industry.

“It was open to the elements. You had a little glass windscreen to block out some of the air. They would have given you a leather flying coat, helmet and goggles.”

The Birkdale Palace Hotel in Southport also got permission from the Air Ministry to use the beach as an airfield. So Southport was added to the Avro Transport Company itinerary.

You could leave Blackpool at noon, touch down at Southport 15 minutes later, or carry on to Manchester, arriving at 12.45pm – much quicker than the train, but also much more expensive at five guineas single, nine guineas return.

Many of the travellers were holidaymakers in Southport wanting a day trip to brasher Blackpool, though one well-heeled sportsman flew to Blackpool just to play golf.

But why a scheduled airline from Blackpool to Manchester? 

Alliott Verdon Roe’s Manchester firm had built 8,000 Avro 504s for use as bombers and later training aircraft during the First World War.

But peace time was bad news for the aero industry, and Avro sought new business opportunities in the aeroplane joyriding business, offering the thrill of a flight from the beach at Blackpool.

“So AV Roe went to Blackpool to talk to the town council there, and they said they were interested in giving permission, but what they really wanted was an airline service to connect them with Manchester.

"Avro agreed to run the airline service if they were licensed for joyriding.”

Up to the end of September 1919, 194 of the 222 scheduled flights had taken place, just 28 cancelled for poor weather.

“By October, the holiday season was over, there was no money to be made from joyriding, so they cancelled for the season,” says Forder.

“The following year, Blackpool town council did not insist on the airline service, so they ran it as just a joyriding service. That was the end of the first scheduled airline service.”

Humble beginnings

But from these humble beginnings grew Manchester’s place in the air transport network.

By 1923, it was possible to get on a Daimler Airway scheduled flight at Hough End bound for Moscow via Croydon, Rotterdam and Berlin – a three-day journey.

Passengers were in a closed cabin, looked after by the first cabin crew – 15-year-old boys armed with flasks of tea and sandwiches.

“One aircraft crashed and killed everyone on board including the 15-year-old flight attendant,” says Forder. “But the biggest scandal reported was that there was a couple together on the aeroplane who were not married.”

The even bigger aviation anniversary, commemorated at Manchester Museum of Science and Industry this year, is the centenary of Roe becoming the first Englishman to fly an all-British aeroplane.

On July 13 1909, Roe’s triplane, powered by a nine-horsepower motorcycle engine, flew 100ft at Lea Marshes, Essex. Ten days later, he managed three flights of up to 900ft.

Britain was playing catch-up. The Wright Brothers had flown in America in 1903, and Louis Bleriot flew 22 miles across the English Channel within days of Roe’s more modest feat in Essex.

Roe was the son of a Patricroft doctor, who served in the Merchant Navy and did an apprenticeship at the locomotive works in Horwich.

His first attempt at flight was in 1908, when Roe camped out in a hut barely big enough for his biplane at the Brooklands race track in Surrey.

It was 1928 before the Royal Aeronautical Society deemed that his 1908 efforts were “hops” not flights. As with some other early aeronautical feats, there was little conclusive contemporary evidence.

Similarly, the Wright Brothers flew in 1903, but were wary of giving public demonstrations until 1908, fearing that their technology would be copied.

Roe lived until 1958, long enough to see the Avro name attached to some of the most famous British aircraft.

“What AV Roe was attempting was such a challenge, it’s amazing he got anywhere at all,” says Forder of the 1909 flight.

“He knew nothing about aerodynamics, he had never built an aeroplane before, didn’t know how to control it and had never flown an aeroplane, and yet he was going to solve all these problems in one go. The fact is he solved them on the second attempt.”

Manchester Museum of Science and Industry has events, including The Science of Flight, up to April 19, to celebrate the centenary of the first all-British flight and a replica of the Roe triplane is on display. See mosi.org.uk/whats-on for details.