Empire Air Mail Scheme
Empire Air Mail Scheme (EAMS) was an attempt by the British Air Ministry to regain leadership of world civil aviation in the late 1930s following the establishment of The Air Mail Route from Cairo to Bagdad in the early 1920s. Conceived in 1934 by Sir Eric Geddes, chairman of Imperial Airways, EAMS sought to greatly expand British civil aviation by shifting all 'first class' mail within the British Empire by air. Imperial Airways was a private company, but like most airlines of the era, relied on public subsidies (in this case, from the Air Ministry) to support its operations. A critical driving force behind EAMS was Sir Christopher Llewellyn Bullock, , Permanent Under-Secretary at the British Air Ministry from 1931 to 1936. Appointed at the age of 38, he remains one of the youngest civil servants to have headed a British Government department. EAMS was a hugely expensive plan, and to make it financially acceptable to the British Government, subsidies were required to support it from the dominions (especially South Africa, India and Australia) and colonies of the Empire. In this way, EAMS served another of Geddes' aims, namely to prevent local Indian, South African and Australian operators from opening