An interview with the civil pioneers….. Flying for Imperial Airways in the 1930s and 1940s

After training with the RAF just after the First World War and service in India, Capt Mollard made his way to Imperial Airways, and tells us about life at Croydon Airport and the London to Paris route. In 1929 Mollard was transferred to Cairo and, as Imperial flew further towards Australia, so did he. Here he co-piloted Captain Alger in the hair-raising first experimental mail flight to Australia in 1931 and delivered one of the first Armstrong-Whitworth Atalantas that would serve on the soon to be opened Calcutta to Singapore route. The Second World War saw him continue to work for Imperial Airways, including surviving flights to Mauritius. In 1947 he became Malaysian Airways’ technical advisor. He started in the airline’s early days, when it flew only three aircraft and stayed long enough to help build it up into ‘a little goldmine’. Captain Mollard was interviewed by David Jones in around 1975. This recording is part of the AeroSociety Podcast series, Development of Civil Aviation from the UK to Australasia, it was digitised thanks to a grant from the RAeS Foundation and the podcast was edited by Eur Ing Mike Stanberry FRAeS.