Hoare remained in the post until January 1924, when a Labour government took power. Lord Thomson was made Secretary of State for Air. A supporter of airships, Thomson was responsible for the Imperial Airship Scheme, which involved the construction of R101 at the Royal Airship Works at Cardington. After the fall of the MacDonald government in November 1924 Hoare returned to the Air Ministry. He was interested in developing air links to the Empire and Dominion countries, particularly India and South Africa. He negotiated a subsidy from the Treasury for Imperial Airways to start a service from Cairo to India. Hoare, with his wife Lady Maud, flew on the inaugural 13-day flight to Delhi, leaving Croydon on 26 December 1926 and arriving on 8 January 1927. The air route to Cape Town, after much negotiation, was finalised in 1929, before he left office, but only commenced in 1932. 1927–1929 His time at the Air Ministry was marked by several important developments that were to confirm the status of the Royal Air Force as a separate entity, play a part in the growth of civil aviation and to develop the awareness of the public about aviation. An early priority for Sir Hugh Trenchard, Chief of the Air Staff 1919–1930, was to establish the officer cadet training college at Cranwell as a permanent establishment. It was Hoare's job to negotiate with the Treasury for the necessary funds. After much resistance Hoare managed to include a provision for permanent buildings in his estimates for 1929. The foundation stone of the Royal Air Force College Cranwell was laid in 1929 and formally opened in 1934. Trenchard had conceived the idea of a university air officer training corps, a sort of Territorial Army for the R.A.F. Hoare and particularly his well connected Parliamentary Private Secretary the academic Sir Geoffrey Butler, then created University Air Squadrons, at Cambridge University then at Oxford University in October 1925, without, however the militarism of the Officer Training Corps and in close collaboration with scientific and engineering work of the Universities. The Air Ministry was also responsible for civil aviation. Early on Hoare set up the Civil Air Transport Subsidies Committee under the Chairmanship of Sir Hubert Hambling to look at the system of subsidies to competing air lines. They reported in February 1923, favouring a single commercial company to run Britain's air routes. In March 1924 Imperial Airways was