A key demand of Imperial Airways was for its airliners to be able to land safely at low speed, on grass or unpaved airfields, as opposed to the normal runway surface present at almost all airports: this requirement had necessitated the adoption of a large wing area (almost as much as a 767 that weighs more than 10 times as much). During 1951, Peter Masefield wrote, "The trouble about a slow aeroplane with a really low wing loading is the way it insists on wallowing about in turbulent air ... One of the reasons why seven times as many people fly to Paris to-day, compared with 1931, is that the incidence of airsickness in modern aircraft is only one-hundredth of that in the pre-War types." Another writer remembered "I had quite often been landed in a '42' at Lympne to take on sufficient fuel to complete the flight (from Paris) to London against a headwind – 90 mph was its normal cruising speed." However, 90 mph was still three times faster than the previous fastest way of making the journey, which via a combination of steamships and trains. When the H.P.42s were finally withdrawn from civil service on 1 September 1939, they had recorded almost a decade without any major accidents or fatalities.