I count it a great honour to have been asked by the Royal Aeronautical Society to deliver the Seventeenth British Commonwealth Lecture. Reading down the list of previous performers in this rôle one feels that it is indeed an election to a very select company.

I have chosen as my subject for this lecture the post-war progress of air transport in Europe. The title may sound rather pedestrian, but I have two main reasons for choosing this theme. First there is the personal reason. I have been intimately associated with the development of air transport in Europe during the post-war period and I am very pleased to have an opportunity to set down a record of the developments which have taken place during those years. Moreover, my associations with European air transport go back to its very beginnings, as pilot of one of Europe’s—and the world’s—first scheduled air services in 1919. The second reason is broader. I welcome an opportunity to review the post-war progress of air transport in Europe because I think that this will show what a revolutionary change the industry has undergone within the relatively short space of fifteen years.