Flights of the Week

Costes v. LeBrix. Last week Dieudonne Costes and Joseph LeBrix, onetime friends who became grumpy enemies while flying around the world together (TIME, Oct. 24, 1927), started to fly from Paris to France's Indo-China. Their flights were separate and bitterly competitive--for the glory of first covering the distance in five days.

Flyer LeBrix was the more forehanded in the race. He took off from the Istres Airdrome near Marseilles, long before dawn of a freezing day last week. He was well over the Mediterranean towards Tunis when press despatches reached Flyer Costes at Paris.

Costes raged and rushed to Le Bourget field outside Paris. Mechanics warned him that his motor was not in perfect tune, No matter; he would go. And as night set in he pulled his controls. The motor stuttered yet lifted him clear of the ground in a slow ascent. He barely cleared some telegraph wires, a village church steeple. At Bondy Forest, only a few miles from Paris, the motor failed altogether and his plane clattered among the trees. In the rip-up he strained his leg, the only leg left him by the War. Helped to the ground, he exclaimed: "This is a fine to-do! I wonder how far LeBrix is by this time?" Joseph LeBrix had passed Tunis, was almost in Cairo.

In Dieudonne Costes' rueful exclamation was all the chagrin of frustrated egotism.

Late in 1927 the two men, eager and friendly, flew across the South Atlantic to Port Natal, Brazil. Thence they hopped about South America. There were official receptions, accolades, photographs. It was noticeable how they jostled each other to get into the front of the pictures.

At La Paz, Bolivia, Flyer LeBrix could constrain himself no longer. It was at the French minister's reception to them, and before that formal throng he loudly complained that his companion was making himself the hero of the flight. The Latins there were vexed with his apparent unmannerliness.

They flew to Washington where, at the French ambassador's, Joseph LeBrix tried to punch Dieudonne Costes' nose in the American manner. The French foot-fighting against the one-legged flyer manifestly would have been dastardly. For appearance's sake they restrained the show of their animosity as they flew across the U. S., as they sailed by ship to Japan, as again they flew across Asia and Europe, to Le Bourget Field at Paris. And there Flyer LeBrix had his great say. It was, harshly: "At last I have finished being valet to Costes."

Canada to Cuba. George W. Haldeman, who in 1927 flew with Ruth Elder from New York almost to Europe, last week took a Bellanca plane at Windsor, Ontario, and flew without stopping to Havana--1,404 miles in 12 hr., 56 min.--the first non-stop flight between Canada and Cuba.

Publisher Van Lear Black of Baltimore was flying over Southern Egypt last week on his gadabout trip from England to Cape Town.