Editing Imperial Airways (section)

===The Africa route===
[[File:De Havilland Hercules.jpg|thumb|right|de Havilland Hercules ''City of Cairo'']]

On 28 February 1931 a weekly service began between London and Mwanza on Lake Victoria in [[Tanganyika (territory)|Tanganyika]] as part of the proposed route to [[Cape Town]]. On 9 December 1931 the Imperial Airways' service for Central Africa was extended experimentally to Cape Town for the carriage of Christmas mail. The aircraft used on the last sector, DH66 G-AARY ''City of Karachi'' arrived in Cape Town on 21 December 1931. On 20 January 1932 a mail-only route to London to Cape Town was opened. On 27 April this route was opened to passengers and took 10 days. In early 1933 [[Armstrong Whitworth Atalanta|Atalanta]]s replaced the DH.66s on the Kisumu to Cape Town sector of the London to Cape Town route.<ref name=Atalanta>Stroud, June 1986, pp.321–326</ref> On 9 February 1936 the trans-Africa route was opened by Imperial Airways between Khartoum and [[Kano (city)|Kano]] in Nigeria.  This route was extended to [[Lagos]] on 15 October 1936.