Rome, Mar. 11.
Fifty civil aeroplanes take off every day from various Italian air fields sprinkled over the peninsula, averaging daily distances which if totalled would be sufficient to reach around the world at the Equator. Official statistics issued by the Air Ministry add that Italian civil aeroplanes flew a total of 7,000,000 miles during 1938.
During the past year, aviation lines transported from the Alps to Sicily 989,179 pounds of mail, 5,730.- 247 pounds of cargo, with a total of 119,280 passengers.
Although no official figures are available as to the number of civil machines today operating in the country, itis estimated that they total at least 150.
These statistics were revealed by Deputy' Umberto Klinger in an audience he had with Premier Benito Mussolini. Deputy Klinger is president of the Ala Littoria Air Company, the only civil airline in Italy, and which is controlled by the government.
Deputy Klinger also told the Duce that a new ain soon will be inaugurated between Italy and South America. At first only mail will be flown to Latin America, but is expected that regular passenger service will be started before the close Klinger added that the name of Mussolini is linked to this new line because his son, Bruno Mussolini, blazed the route for the new line in the spring of 1938, when he led a squadron of three bombing planes on a ron-rtop flight to South America.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.